


Apple of Your Eye

by fakeCRfan



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Other, Platonic Relationships, Troubling dilemmas of agency and consent, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27182735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fakeCRfan/pseuds/fakeCRfan
Summary: You love Martin Blackwood.It’s hard to say when it happened. Like anything regarding humans it was all too fast, one milestone blurring into the other until suddenly you were smitten. Love, you think, is like fear. There are no real distinctions to be made, no clear lines between this and that, before and after.In a way, you fell in love with Martin Blackwood, but in another very real way, you were never not in love with him.In which the Eye is fond of Martin. Perhaps a little too fond for comfort.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Beholding/Martin Blackwood
Comments: 411
Kudos: 269





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't always go on the kinkmeme, because I usually don't write about sex. But I was super bored, so I went and found a prompt that I actually liked. In short:
>
>> _Basically, the Eye had a big ol crush on Martin, and used its Archivist to fulfill that crush. Jon never would have developed feelings for Martin without becoming an avatar of the Eye, because they aren't his feelings, they're the Eye's feelings; it's just that a good chunk of Jon's brain is currently inhabited by the Eye, and he can't tell the difference._  
> 
> 
> I was going to keep it there, because posting this is basically admitting I have gone to kinkmeme which is kind of embarrassing. But then I realized I have no friends, so who am I gonna embarrass myself in front of?
> 
> As always, mind the tags. :D

You love Martin Blackwood.

It’s hard to say when it happened. Like anything regarding humans it was all too fast, one milestone blurring into the other until suddenly you were smitten. Love, you think, is like fear. There are no real distinctions to be made, no clear lines between this and that, before and after.

You had always known of him, as you know of everyone. But he and his lovely neuroses didn’t start to come into focus until he knocked on the door of your Institute, looking for a job.

He was beautiful to you then. Squirming in his seat. Trembling. Trying to hide behind his paper-thin lies. You turned your servant’s gaze on him and he burned underneath it.

“Hmm," you had your servant say. “Parapsychology? We certainly are in need of someone with such expertise, for sure. What do you think of the recent Pearson study on telekinesis?’’

You felt icy fear curl in his blood. The delicious fear of discovery. “W-well, I don’t—telekinesis wasn’t my...’’

“Oh, and you must have met Dr. Smith," your servant continued, barely hiding his grin. “He’s been teaching at your university for some years now. How is the old boy getting on?"

Oh, what a joy that whole interview was! You knew immediately you would keep him, how could you not? But still your servant Magnus kept him in that seat for an hour. Raking over that paper with all his lies. Lingering over every thin detail. Making up fake people and watching him stupidly nod along and pretend to know them. You reveled in it.

Was it love, then?

* * *

You kept Martin, and you Learned him, and you enjoyed him. Martin Blackwood burned when anyone looked at him, a burn that delighted you to no end. He recoiled from being Seen, from being Judged. It made him the perfect meal to have around, ready to play with and consume at your leisure.

In those early days, you would nudge Magnus to savor him. Magnus, ever obedient, performed such task admirably. Showing up when least wanted or expected. Standing over Martin. Leaning over his shoulder to see what was on his computer. Each new encounter bringing a new cascade of panic.

_Oh god what if I haven’t been doing it right? What if I haven’t been doing it right and he sees?_

_Why is he still here? Did he see—_

_Oh no, he mentioned the resume. Is he going to fire me?_

_Please, please go away..._

But Martin didn’t just hurt under your gaze, no. Instead, he was a human stuck in a paradox. He burned and hurt under the eyes of the people around him—but also ached and wasted away from being unseen. And so you got to taste something else, something almost new. Want.

Because Martin wanted to be seen. Wanted to be hurt, if it meant not being forgotten.

This drove you wild. Was that love? That delight when you could taste want mixed in with that fear? That urge to more fully sample it?

You remember the first time you had your servant Magnus touch him at one of those library meetings. Nothing untoward enough to draw attention. Just a hand on the shoulder. Squeezing. Just enough to make that fear alight in Martin, as he squirmed under the touch before going still.

_What is he doing, why—_

_The other employees are looking please don’t—_

“Rather tense, aren’t we?’’ your servant Magnus said. “Make sure you get enough rest.’’

And he held his hand there, because you wanted him to. Because Martin’s confusion and fear and terror sang right into his hands, and it made you ache with pure pleasure. Then, he let go and you got to feel that residual loss and confusion.

_It couldn’t be—no, it was just a regular, friendly—_

_Yeah, right. Like anyone would want you like that, Martin. You wish._

“Martin?" your servant Magnus asked with faux confusion. “Are you quite alright?"

“Y-yeah.’’ Martin rubbed his shoulder, still afraid. Still burning. And yet amusingly wishing he were _worthy_ of being hurt in the way he feared. “Just—tired."

“Take care of yourself," you had your servant say.

You didn’t repeat it too obviously, of course. You simply put the urge in your servant’s mind, had him slowly add more of those slight touches so you drink in his reactions. You loved to watch his face during those moments. That adorable uncertainty and discomfort. That conflict between terror and wishing that _anyone_ would pay _any_ kind of attention to him.

Was it love then? Reveling in that contact? Looking forward to any days you’d get to see him?

* * *

You didn’t have plans to do much more. Not when the set-up was already perfect as it was: him right in your Institute, ready for you to play with whenever you felt like it _._ But then, your servant assigned him to the Archives and a funny thing happened.

He fell in love with the Archivist.

Love mixed with fear turned out to be an intoxicating song. And not one you could resist. And was that when you fell in love? When you started to taste his own love mixed in with that fear you craved?

Or perhaps it was later—when he burned you back. When took bits of your treasured knowledge-self and destroyed them.

He _hurt_ you, and it shook you to your core. For a moment you hated him. But perhaps that pain and anger and fear of your own only wanted to make you curl around him more. And oh, oh how beautiful his tears were after. How sweetly he shook in your servant’s hand as you branded his punishment into his psyche.

No, you think. It wasn’t a single one of those moments—and at the same time, it was all of them.

In a way, you fell in love with Martin Blackwood, but in another very real way, you were never not in love with him.

But perhaps the biggest turning point was when your Archivist fell into that deep sleep. Because then you got to hear your Martin weeping over him, begging.

“Please wake up,’’ he said. “If you have any power left—please.’’

You felt excitement curl in your deepest self, then. Because before, you had touched and felt Martin through a vessel he feared and hated. That had its own charm, of course—but what would it be like to puppet a vessel he loved? To see adoration in his eyes? To taste his fear while he lavished you with care?

And so, you called upon your sister of many strings and machinations to help you keep this Archivist. Then, when he woke up, you seized his brain and flooded it with your desire, your longing.

“Martin,’’ you said with his throat. “Martin—I have to see Martin.’’


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is edited from the initial version of this chapter I posted on kinkmeme, with a few new moments added. I am going to try to do this to the rest of the fic as I move forward, making sure that I enhance each chapter as I go. That way, even people who read the initial version might still have something to look forward to.
> 
> I have other fics to write, but I feel like I've gotten more attention for this one so I feel more motivated to continue it. Plus, the draft version is almost done.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

**[CLICK]**

**[SOUND OF THE TAPE WHIRRING]  
  
THE ARCHIVIST**

Right. So. For once I am turning this on myself, I suppose. I haven’t had to bother with that much lately.  
  
I think this may end up being something that it...the Beholding, the Institute… doesn’t want me to think too deeply about. Or record. But since I woke up, I’ve been experiencing certain changes.  
  
It’s hard to tell how much of my recent impulses are me, and how much are… something else. Or if there is even a distinction to be made. Especially with regards to my—my harmful actions towards strangers.  
  
But this is about something different. Something less… harmful. Or I… I think it’s less harmful. But nevertheless, there have been certain feelings that are—that are—different? Stronger? In regards to… In regards…  
  
[ANXIOUS TAPPING]  
  
I’m stalling. I.. I don’t want to say it. What if he...I suppose he doesn’t seem to care now, one way or another. But still the idea of him finding this tape and… and hurting, it’s—it makes me--[FRUSTRATED NOISE]  
  
[PAUSE, THEN SOFTLY] I’ve never felt this way before. For a—for another man, but also for anyone. Not like this. Not so intensely. It’s—it feels good. It feels right. But it’s so… it’s so out of my usual patterns that…  
  
It could just be me. I want to believe it’s me. I… I… [DEEP SIGH]  
  
Daisy’s wrong. Talking it out doesn’t help.

  
  
**[CLICK]**   
  


* * *

* * *

It is much easier to say why, than when.  
  
Martin. Your Martin. There are a thousand reasons to love him.  
  
He is a raw, pulsing nerve. He is an ever-bleeding wound. He is electricity under the skin, and his terror sings so sweetly.

Before, such beauty as Martin would have passed quickly. All human beauty does, falling so quickly and easily to the End of All Things. But now, in the world your servant Magnus has orchestrated, you realize you can keep your Martin forever.

The thought makes your deepest self pulse with excitement.

The two of them, the Archivist and your Martin, sit in their Cabin as you drip the suffering of the world into the Archivist’s head. The Archivist sobs and weeps most of these days, unable to sleep. Somehow, this provokes Martin to move, to Perform. He combs out the Archivist’s hair as the Archivist is paralyzed by terror. He sings and hums to him when the Archivist has gone dumb from Beholding the horror-beauty of this new world.

Martin feels ready to break in half. But he looks at your Archivist, and smiles.

Ever afraid of being seen, ever burning under your Eye, he smiles. There is such a beauty, you think, in a smile that blooms even in your world of terror.

He then goes to another room and hyperventilates, and that too has a beauty to it. He curls in on himself, only letting the tears fall because he thinks the Archivist cannot see (the Archivist can always see).  
  
“It can’t—no, this can’t be it,’’ your Martin says. He thinks the Archivist cannot hear(the Archivist can always hear.) “We can fix it. We can fix it. We just have to try.’’  
  
There is hope in his voice, in his words. You love his hope. It aches in him. It stings him like the bite of a lash, hurting him so that he can’t sit still. He scrambles to find things to do, objects to cling to. Ropes, bandages, first-aid supplies, maps—all useless, of course. They are relics of a dead world, relics of false hope.  
  
You watch him pack these relics to cover his pain, and your fondness swells to something near unbearable. The Archivist finds a smile twisting on his face in the other room.  
  
“Once Jon’s ready,’’ your Martin says. “Once he’s had enough time--’’  
  
Your Archivist needs more time at this point. You are still bleeding him of his human grief. But even as you drip the suffering of the world into him, you drip You urge him to stir that hope you love so.  
  
When they are finally on the road, the Archivist starts to respond.  
  
“Gertrude didn’t know everything,’’ he tells Martin. “I can’t see a way to turn it back yet. But I can’t see Elias either. Since there are still blind spots… there may be a way, and it’s just one of the things I can’t see.’’  
  
Martin’s eyes alight. “There is,’’ he says with false confidence. “We will turn the world back.’’  
  
His tone is so bright, but he is so hollow under it. You flood your adoration into your Archivist, until he is so overcome that he Must touch your Martin. He does—places a reverent hand on his cheek—and you feel that hope sing to your through that exquisite touch.  
  
Matin’s hope, too, is a kind of fear.  
  
“We will,’’ the Archivist lies to him. “I believe it.’’

* * *

  
Your Martin is lovely to watch, when he thinks your Archivist isn’t looking at him. He scurries about like a mouse. He tries to find something useful in the landscape, perhaps on the ground (there is nothing to be found). He tries to find something useful to do as they carry on (there is nothing to be done). When he turns back to see your Archivist still staring at him, he smiles so brightly.  
  
Genuine happiness, to see your fondness in the Archivist’s eyes. Genuine fear, as he thinks about all of the things the Archivist must know of him.  
  
 _Please don't look in my head,_ he thinks. _Please keep believing I’m as hopeful as I say._  
  
It is such a _Martin_ thing, to try and keep up a facade for a man who knows everything and can look into his head at a whim. It makes your deepest self swell again with fondness, and your Archivist’s heart may nearly burst from it.  
  
“Look!’’ Martin says. “A fridge. Think it’ll bite my head off if I open it?  
  
“It won’t,’’ the Archivist says.  
  
“Who’s apocalypse nightmare involves evil fridges out in the open, anyway?’’ Martin says. “Wonder what’s ins—no, don’t tell me. Let me try and think. Most horrifying thing to find in a fridge… toes in jars? Congealed blood? Nothing but peaches?’’  
  
 _Please laugh,_ Martin thinks. _Please feel something besides..._  
  
You can give him this. You pour your delight into the Archivist until he cannot stop smiling, and for a moment joy sparks in your Martin’s chest.  
  
You want to give Martin whatever he wants. You want him to feel joy. That joy hurts like the hope does, prickling at all of his nerves. It keeps him feeling, so that when the worst comes you can harvest his horror as fresh as though it were the first time he had felt.  
  
Martin’s joy, too, is a kind of fear.

* * *

  
You like to tease Martin’s fears, as you always have.

“Don’t look into my head,’’ Martin tells your Archivist. “Don’t Know things about me, okay? Just—find them out the regular way.’’  
  
“I haven’t,’’ the Archivist reassures. “I won’t.’’  
  
It is a false reassurance. Even if the Archivist doesn’t look, you See all things related to Martin, and have since he entered your Institute. There is no corner of Martin left unturned, no ugly part of him unknown. Still, Martin’s unease crawls in him.  
  
 _If he really looked, if he saw everything about me, would he still--_  
  
You let this unease grow, because you love it. Still, Martin holds your Archivist’s gaze and smiles even as he burns under it. Ever afraid of being seen (ever afraid of being unseen).  
  
Of course you can’t help but prod that terror. You lace knowledge into the Archivist’s mind about Martin. Nothing big, not yet. Not even enough that the Archivist himself can tell it comes from you. Just a little, here and there, to stir the coals of that fear.  
  
“Unfortunately I don’t think this ice-cream parlour will have mint-chocolate,’’ the Archivist sighs. “Much as I wish I could get you your favorite.’’  
  
Martin freezes. “Oh, I mentioned that to you?’’  
  
 _Has he looked--  
  
No, he wouldn’t—would he? Would he do that and just not tell me? _  
  
“Yes,’’ the Archivist says. “Back in the Archives.’’  
  
“And you remembered?’’ Martin asks incredulously.  
  
He’s trying to search back all of his memories. See if he can confirm if he ever mentioned it. Deeply hoping that the Archivist didn’t look into his head, didn’t Know, and won’t ever.  
  
 _If he looks, he’ll realize I’m not good enough for--_  
  
But even as he thinks it, he is overwhelmed that the Archivist would care to remember such a simple thing about him.  
  
You pour more your swelling love into the Archivist. You want him to show your Martin love.  
  
You have him bring your Martin gifts. You want him to have things—any things he wants, or things he does not yet know he wants. There are very few of those empty relics he loves out here in your world. Still, you search and search, until you have just the thing for your Archivist to pick up and deliver.  
  
Your Martin stares down at it. “What’s this?’’  
  
The Archivist coughs. “I found it,’’ he said. “Just a blank notebook. Set dressing for one of the houses in that village, it seems. I… if you wanted to get back to writing.’’  
  
Martin's affection flutters. Your own affection rises to meet it.  
  
“What, it won’t turn into spiders when I touch it?’’ he asks, cheekily.  
  
“It won’t!’’ the Archivist manages to sound offended. “It’s the expensive brand you always wanted but never thought you could justify buying, too. See?’’  
  
Martin turns cold inside. Because the whole sentiment is overly specific, and he cannot remember if he told the Archivist this in so many words. But before he can process it, the Archivist is running over his thoughts.  
  
“And anyway, I… may want to hear more of your poetry,’’ he says.  
  
“You do not,’’ Martin says. “I know you’re not a poetry person.’’  
  
“I am for your poetry,’’ you have the Archivist say.  
  
And Martin’s love swells. You love to see his love. It feels like a thousand needles in Martin’s lungs as he draws breath. It’s one more ache to a man who has always ached.  
  
 _If he really looked into my head, he’d stop—he wouldn’t look at me like that anymore. No one would.  
  
...everyone gets tired of people they know too well, after all._  
  
Martin’s love, too, is fear.  
  
Because every thing Martin feels is fear. There is no joy or pleasure he has that is not laced with over thirty years of quiet sorrow. There is no hope he has untouched by memories of shattering loss. There is no joy without the wistfulness of knowing how temporary it always is. There is no love without the creeping certainty of losing it.  
  
Those tiny human emotions ache so acutely in him, every one of them is laced with the sweetest terror.  
  
The Archivist does not respond to feeling love with physical affection, as another vessel might. So you have to push that into him, as well. You fill him with your desire to touch, to hold, to kiss. And then the Archivist finally-finally (!) takes your Martin’s face in his hands.

“Martin.’’ The Archivist says, uncomfortable even as he makes the gesture. “I… you know I…’’

“Yes, Jon,’’ Martin says, amused as his heart flutters. “I know you.’’  
  
The Archivist harrumphs. Before he says anything else, you have the Archivist tilt his head up, and press his lips to Martin’s. Like that, you taste his every ache, his every prickle of fright, and you drink them all in.  
  


Martin is wrong. You know all there is to know of Martin, every pettiness, every joy, all of the sweet fear, and you love him no less for knowing it.  
  


* * *

Martin writes in the notebook you gave him. The Archivist, every bit as nosy as you are, peeks over his shoulder. When Martin realizes, he shoves him off.

“No!’’ he cries. “It’s not good enough yet!’’

The Archivist huffs. “I’m sure it’s fine.’’

“I said no,’’ Martin pouts. “You have to wait.’’

Of course, you are under no such obligation. You peek over at his book from the sky, eagerly drinking up everything he has written.

The poems change each time he writes in it. _Your sparkling eyes_ becomes _Your heavy gaze,_ before being crossed out completely. _Moments with you_ becomes _every breath within your presence._

The slow metamorphosis intrigues you much as anything else. You continue to watch, peeking and noting each new evolution.

One day, as he is writing, Martin looks over his shoulder self consciously and up to the sky—up to you. But as with the sun, he turns quickly away.

* * *

  
You do not see the blind spot coming.  
  
You are busy with more gifts, more prodding. Enough of those prods of information to spike his fear. enough affection to stir the embers of his love.  
  
And you touch him. Carefully, of course. Fingers lightly traced across the skin of Martin’s forearm. Arms softly encircling him. Resting the Archivist’s head on his shoulder. More kisses, on the cheek and the forehead and the lips. More and more you like to feel through the Archivist’s body.  
  
You love to touch him so.  
  
“You’re, uh,’’ Martin says breathlessly after a particularly long kiss. “You’re getting a lot more affectionate, these days?’’  
  
“Hmm?’’ the Archivist’s confusion is his own. “I suppose I am. Do you mind?’’  
  
“No.’’ His voice breaks off into a light laugh. “No, it’s good.’’  
  
The house is a Mystery. You can appreciate a Mystery. Except you don’t think you appreciate this one, because it shuts you out. You are not in the Archivist’s body as you were. You do not feel Martin’s hand. You do not feel his skin. You are thrust out, cut off.  
  
And then, you can’t see your Martin.  
  
For a moment, you feel the burn of your own terror again. Then, you are all rage.  
  
Continents crack into smaller pieces. The sea boils and all of the souls trapped in it. It is not a scream you make in your rage, but all hear it and for a long moment their fear is all the worse for it.  
  
You will have him back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a doozy, this chapter. Figure I should mention some elements in advance this time.
> 
> -canon typical Beholding messing with Jon's free will and agency, except this time with makeouts. So ''dubcon kissing'' I guess?  
> -brief, glossed over rape ideation.  
> -Brief, glossed over mention of rack torture in a flesh domain

**[CLICK]  
  
[SOUND OF TAPE WHIRRING]**

**THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
...For once I am glad this thing showed up. Though it seems for this, I must turn it on myself again. This place… it’s shut out the Eye, it seems. Which makes it so much harder to focus but… while I can, I feel like I should record this.  
  
There is a difference. Between my feelings for… between my feelings right now, and out there in the Eye’s world. It’s not so… intense in here.  
  
...I suppose I already knew. That it’s not my—it’s not my own feelings. I just didn’t want to think about it.  
  
[SHORT, SAD LAUGH]I still don’t. I--

**[DOOR OPENING]**  
  
  


**MARTIN**  
  
Hey! Mikaele just made the most delicious drinks and—oh dear, are you alright?  
  
**THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
I-I’m fi-  
  
**MARTIN**  
  
[DISBELIEVING] Uh huh.  
  
**THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
...Give me a moment. I just need a second to myself.  
  
**MARTIN**  
  
You sure?  
  
**THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
Yeah. Please. [STRONGER] I’ll be right down.  
  
**MARTIN**  
  
...okay. When you’re ready then.

  
  
**[DOOR CLOSES. SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS DISAPPEARING DOWN THE HALL]**  
  
****

**THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
...he’s so happy here.  
  
I won’t tell him. It’s not a distinction that matters. Not anymore. And he’s so—after everything I’ve put him through, he deserves…  
  
I won’t tell him.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

* * *

  
You rage and sputter for a while. But in the end, you have to wait for them to come out.

(And once you have settled, you are certain they will come out. They need you.)

Your will and your sight bleed slowly back into the Archivist, as it happens. For a moment, it is hazy. The Archivist has deteriorated in the time spent away. You sharpen his mind and his senses again.

You turn his gaze to Martin, and watch him slowly come into focus.  
  
“Jon?’’ his brow is creased. “Jon? Is everything alright?’’  
  
You search through the Archivist’s mind. You find nothing. You can’t even see it in Martin’s mind—everything that happened in the Blinding House is shrouded from you.

The Archivist’s confusion turns to panic as he realizes he can’t remember. “What happened? Where were we?’’  
  
Martin looks very patient. “Mystery house with Mikaele Salesa. Nothing bad happened. Relax.’’  
  
The Archivist’s panic subsides. Suddenly, he becomes aware of a tape in his inner pocket--a tape that he knows he made in the house Martin mentions. He does not remember the contents of this tape. You, also, do not know the contents of this tape, and it itches at you. However, he only thinks of this tape for a minute, before your irritation with the situation overrides the thought.  
  
“Second time you’ve asked, by the way,’’ Martin says.  
  
“Right,’’ the Archivist says, still processing. “It’s weird to not just Know.’’  
  
Martin smiles. Bites his lip, like he’s holding back laughter.  
  
“What?’’  
  
“Nothing!’’ Martin says, shaking his head. “You’re just making that face. Like when you—wait, that’s right, you can’t remember. But you look so mopey when you can’t--’’  
  
You have gone too long with Martin out of your sight. Now, the smile and the shake of his head breaks the last of your patience, and you grab him.  
  
Normally it is enough for the Archivist to feel your feelings. You are normally content to wait for the Archivist to act on your feelings in his chosen manner. But Martin has been gone from you for too long, now. You want to See him in all ways, and you don’t want to wait. So you seize the Archivist directly. You take control of every last muscle fiber, every last neuron in his brain.  
  
You grab Martin so hard and fast that he gasps. You greedily take in all the information from this: the feeling of Martin, his heat, his shocked yelps, his clumsy struggle to keep his footing as you shove him back. You watch his pupils go wide and feel his flesh give softly where you take hold.  
  
“Jo—mm?’’  
  
You have Martin’s back against a tree—one of the rotten, corrupted things in this landscape—and you press lips against his before he can say anything. Normally Martin would be much too big and strong for your Archivist to pin to a wall easily, but in this world everyone is exactly as strong as you want them to be. Not that Martin resists. He kisses back, half-confused, half-affectionate even as that apprehension spikes.

_This isn't right. This isn’t like you. Something's off._  
  
“Hey,’’ Martin manages after pulling his head away. “Is there--?’’  
  
You drag his head back down by his hair and press your mouth to his again before he can voice his concern. You rake your other hand over his body and he squirms. You can feel (See) all of him like this. Not just his body’s reactions, but every drop of desire and worry and affection and Love. It seeps into the Archivist’s hands where you grab him and through your kiss (all off the Archivist is an Eye).  
  
Your Martin gently pushes back. You take another moment in that deep kiss before letting up, body still pressed to his, arms wrapping tightly around him.  
  
“Woah, okay,’’ Martin says breathlessly. “Where is this coming from?’’  
  
“I love you,’’ you say through the Archivist’s voice.  
  
“I love you too. What’s wrong?’’  
  
“I--’’ The Archivist blinks of his own accord, confused. You allow him the gesture. “Nothing? I just. Felt the impulse?’’  
  
_Bullshit,_ Martin thinks.  
  
But it is true. Every bit of this feels as natural to the Archivist as it does to you. If your own desires and impulses had ever felt unnatural to the Archivist—well, then he would not have been able to become the Archivist. So now, even as you puppet him directly—taking his hand from Martin’s hair to place it gently on the side of his face and slowly trace down the side of Martin’s neck—he feels as though every action is his own.  
  
Martin squirms under that long touch. “You sure?’’  
  
_He’s planning to tell me something he knows I won’t like,_ Martin thinks _. He’s doing this to pacify--_  
  
“You know you don’t have to—you don’t have to anything,’’ Martin says. “I know you’re not—it’s fine. It’s—ohhh lord.’’  
  
You press the Archivist’s mouth to Martin’s neck.  
  
“You don’t like it?’’ You ask.  
  
“Nnn—I mean I like it, but are you su—Jesus!’’  
  
You log the noises Martin makes as you put a hand under his shirt as brand new information. That inflames you. You want to pull more out of him. More reactions. More noises. More feelings. More little fears. Instead, Martin pushes back again.  
  
“Maybe not here?’’ Martin says uncertainly, grabbing the Archivist’s wrist. “I mean it’s all…’’  
  
Martin gestures to the domain you are in, a wasteland of rot and crawling things. It is a distraction, an excuse. Martin wants the Archivist. Wants to have him in those physical ways that humans have each other sometimes. You can feel his desire pooling in his stomach, stirred by your touches.  
  
To Martin, thought, physical desire is secondary to making sure the Archivist is alright (the Archivist will never be alright).  
  
_I’ll just buy some time. Hopefully he’ll tell me what this was really about later._  
  
“All the decay is kind of killing the mood,’’ Martin says quickly.  
  
You pull the Archivist’s head back, and look so deeply into Martin’s eyes that he burns again. You could force him, you think. The thought excites you, for a moment. You are curious what kinds of terror and heartache might bleed together then. What new music Martin’s fear might sing in the wake of such an act. But it would also probably destroy the delicate balance you have now. The gentle, creeping dread (the tenderness and trust).  
  
You decide to keep the (tenderness and trust) dread. You can be patient.  
  
“Alright,’’ you have the Archivist say, giving one last loving kiss to Martin’s cheek. “Whatever you want.’’  
  
You are not your many-stringed sister. Puppeting the Archivist’s movements is irritating when it comes to boring activities such as walking. Such actions give you no new information. Because of this, you pull your will back from the Archivist—perhaps too abruptly. The Archivist stumbles a bit, disoriented from the loss of guidance. Martin is immediately at his side, holding his arm affectionately (steadying him), swallowing down his discomfort.  
  
_Something’s really wrong…_  
  
“Since this place makes you uneasy, let’s get through as quickly as possible,’’ the Archivist says.  
  
“‘Uneasy’ is one way of putting it,’’ Martin says. “Wish you had gotten in ‘the mood’ back at Mikaele’s house. You know, where there were nice rooms and clean beds.’’  
  
You make a note of “clean beds’’ as being a potential influencing factor in the future. You look through all of the different domains for one that fits this description.  
  
“Is that your fantasy, then?’’ it’s actually the Archivist who asks, attempting to tease even as he fumbles about, trying to re-gain his bearings. “Doing it in a bed?’’  
  
“I’m sorry,’’ Martin says primly. “Is yours doing it backed up against a giant… rotting, centipede filled corruption tree?’’  
  
“No!’’  
  
“Uh-huh. You say that, but you were just--’’  
  
“It is not!’’  
  
There is actually laughter, and for a moment it is enough to make them both forget their unease.

* * *

  
You decide to take it slowly.  
  
You want to have sex with Martin Blackwood—or rather, experience it through your Archivist and log it as part of your ever growing shrine of information about your Martin. However, the suddenness and intensity of your actions last time put him off. It scared him (you like him scared, but--).  
  
You have the pure, unfiltered horror of every being in the world now. You can go slow and have something… different, from Martin.  
  
So you will take it slowly. Thread your new want into the Archivist so smoothly that Martin will accept it.  
  
At the thought, you turn your Archivist’s head around to where Martin is following behind him, and then you fill him with overflowing love until he waits for Martin to catch up, and then puts a hand on his shoulder.  
  
(This is why you puppeted him, before. Your ever-sluggish Archivist is the sort of human who responds to overwhelming affection by placing a hand on someone’s shoulder.)  
  
“Hey,’’ Martin says.  
  
“Hey,’’ Jon says back, before hesitantly raising a hand to Martin’s head and brushing some rot out of his hair. “Got something there.’’  
  
Even such a simple gesture makes Martin’s stomach drop and his heart soar. He beams, and for that moment he can almost forget his fear.  
  
Over the rest of the trek, you slowly ramp up the affection. Sometimes by planting the feeling in the Archivist’s mind and waiting for him to act in his understated way. Sometimes taking the initiative yourself.  
  
You stroke Martin’s hair with the Archivist’s hand. You kiss him with the Archivist’s mouth, getting slowly bolder with each new kiss. You hold him tighter than the Archivist ever would. The Archivist feels nothing amiss because each new touch is a Discovery, and he is ever curious as you are to feel things in way he did not before (if he were not, he would not have become the Archivist).  
  
“Jon,’’ Martin says during one such silent moment, uneasy and wanting at the way the Archivist’s hands are trailing down his back. “You’re not...’’  
  
_Are you dying? Am I going to die? Why are you acting like this?_  
  
“Hmm?’’  
  
The Archivist blinks curiously and looks at Martin. Martin looks back, radiating heartbreak.  
  
_What is he…?_  
  
Martin wishes he could believe this was purely desire, that it was purely the Archivist having an overriding love for him. But Martin know deeply that he is deeply unspecial, an exception to no rules. Not even the mundane rule _Jon doesn’t._  
  
“Jon,’’ he says. “If there were something wrong, you’d tell me, right?’’  
  
“I thought you didn’t want to hear the statements,’’ the Archivist says, amused.

Martin dips his chin down to glare, deeply annoyed. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,’’ he huffs.  
  
“I’m not allowed to read your mind though, remember?’’  
  
“You’re insufferable.’’ _\--the worst, I love him--_ “I meant something wrong with—with you. Something on your mind.’’  
  
“Of course,’’ the Archivist lies.  
  
“Really?’’ _\--fifteen feet of snow in Arthur Nolan’s apartment before I believe--_ “You wouldn’t just, oh, put it off because it’s hard to talk about and attempt to be really nice to make up for it?’’  
  
You flood affection into the Archivist. He squeezes Martin’s shoulder, unsure of himself. “That’s not what this is.”  
  
“Really?’’ Martin asks, gently as he can. “Because you’re being rather— _something_ —compared to your regular self lately. You know?’’  
  
They haven’t talked about sex. There has been an unspoken understanding, of not doing it and not talking about it. So you don’t push it now.  
  
“I suppose I--’’ the Archivist stumbles. He does not know why he suddenly wants to do things with Martin that he has not wanted before, so he rationalizes. “You’re more important to me than anyone I’ve been with before, so that’s… that’s all.’’  
  
“Right.’’  
  
A sudden worry hits the Archivist. “I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?’’  
  
“No.’’ _\--_ _yes, fucking hell yes, but not_ _like--_ “Just… surprised. Worried about you.’’  
  
You have him kiss Martin forehead. “Don’t be.’’

* * *

  
Something changes in the land of Tearing-Flesh. There is a statement the Archivist has to make. Martin leaves to shield his ears as he always does, and falls behind.  
  
When out of the Archivist’s presence, he loses the Archivist’s protection. This is not a problem—you don’t need him to be near the Archivist to protect him. For a moment, you reach to extend another one to him—but then one of the wretched souls in that domain grabs him.  
  
Martin has seen others here torn limb from limb. Once he is seized he knows what is intended for him. He screams and struggles.  
  
“Jon! Jon help!’’  
  
You watch. You have the impulse to reach out in stop it—you _could_ stop it—but you are transfixed.  
  
Martin’s abject terror is breathtaking.  
  
You did not think you could forget how beautiful Martin is, when he is in overwhelming agony. But there, as different figures grab each limb and chains it down pull—your being spikes with his intense anguish. He screams and sobs without restraint until he’s too exhausted to make another sound, then he is quivering and weeping silently.  
  
You are drunk on this, on him. You could feed the end of a whole new world off this image alone.  
  
The Archivist is not nearby. But his statement ends, and he Sees. And as he sees and you see, he is overcome by the beauty of it all, as you are. His heart swells, the way it used to when as a human he saw grand works of architecture or paintings. A smile twists involuntarily onto his face. Like that, he watches.  
  
Then, he snaps. The cold reality of what he was Beholding and appreciating hits him like ice water.  
  
“Martin!’’ he calls, whirling around (he let Martin fall out of his sight, foolish Archivist.) “Martin!’’

The Archivist annihilates the culprits faster than he has anyone before. He frees Martin, who clings to him and sobs into his shoulder. There is no permanent damage—this is not a world where anyone can be permanently damaged. And yet Martin cannot walk, from the pain and the fear of it all.  
  
You project as much of yourself as you can into the Archivist’s body, so you can feel your Martin’s body pressing into his.  
  
“Jon,’’ he cries, and you soak in the vibrations of his words running through the Archivist’s body. “Jon, I was so scared.’’  
  
You are deeply sated. Silly, intoxicated with this feeling. Of Martin’s fear, and of him clinging to the Archivist (you) in gratitude.  
  
“You’re safe,’’ you say, using the Archivist’s voice. “No one will get near you again.’’  
  
That should be it. An unplanned but rather satisfying encounter. But then, you feel something shift deep within the Archivist.

His shock and his shame reverberate back into your being, souring the taste of it all. You feel a sense of wrongness in him. A wrongness of Self. Not “this is not me’’ as he used to lie to himself in the days before the world ended. But “I don’t want this to be me.’’  
  
A rejection. A tiny, near invisible rejection of your will and your joy.  
  
For the first time in a long time, the Archivist is afraid.


	4. Chapter 4

The Archivist keeps Martin close, supporting him until after they have left the land of Tearing-Flesh. Then another wave of residual terror hits Martin so hard he collapses, sobbing all over again as the Archivist holds him.  
  
“I’m sorry,’’ Martin babbles. “I’m sorry.’’  
  
It is beautifully nonsensical. Martin doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for. It’s simply reflex, a response ingrained down to his bone, to apologize when he is hurt.  
  
“Don’t,’’ the Archivist tells him. “Don’t apologize.’’  
  
The Archivist does not resist your will. Not exactly. Rather he redirects it.

You want to reach down and kiss Martin, but as you have the Archivist lean in he instead puts his forehead in the crook of Martin’s neck. You want to run hands over Martin’s body, and instead the Archivist grips him in place.  
  
After Martin recovers and they start to walk again, he holds Martin’s hand. When Martin tries to leave he doesn’t let go.  
  
“Jon,’’ he says, softly at first. Then, as the miles go on, he gets more tetchy. “Jon, come on.’’  
  
Martin does not pull away however. Instead, he brushes away his tears and puts back his shoulders. He tries to put the bounce back in his step and mask how wounded he still is.

You want to reach out and stroke his hair. But as before, the Archivist redirects and instead squeezes his hand.  
  
You decide to allow the redirection. For now.

* * *

  
You lay out the next domain for them. Rows and rows of unassuming houses. Lonely houses. Each clean and packed to the brim with all of the empty comforts you know Martin loves. Pillows, food, books, pens and pencils. And of course, clean beds.  
  
You nudge at the Archivist as they enter one of the rooms. He and Martin sit down on one of the beds, and you making the Archivist note how soft it is. You remind him that Martin mentioned clean beds last time as a factor of Enticement. Then, you fill his mind with helpful suggestions of what he and Martin could be doing on those beds.  
  
The Archivist shudders. He holds Martin’s hand tighter, and brings the other up to his mouth as though he’s about to vomit.  
  
“Jon?’’ Martin asks, squeezing his hand. “You alright?’’  
  
“Yes. Yes I’m fine.’’  
  
 _Sure you are._ “Is it a statement then?”  
  
“A… yes. A statement,’’ the Archivist agrees, because it is an easier explanation.

“Alright, then. I’ll just...’’  
  
Martin unlaces his fingers and takes a step away. The Archivist numbly lets him for a moment, before his fear seizes him again. Then, he grips Martin by the wrist.  
  
“Jon, please,’’ Martin asks, gently pulling his wrist away. “You know I don’t want to hear it. I’ll be just around the corner--’’  
  
“ _No.’’_  
  
It is all the Archivist can do to not shout.  
  
“I can’t let you do that,’’ the Archivist tells him, squeezing his wrist. “I need to protect you.’’  
  
The Archivist does not add that he wants to protect Martin from himself.  
  
“It’s the Lonely,’’ he says instead. “I’ve lost you to it before. After the last place I… I don’t think it’s safe to risk being separated.’’  
  
There is a landscape of terror blooming in the Archivist, and for once it is not something you have planted. It is his fear of his own little understood nature, that made him so greatly enjoy the suffering of someone he thought he loved. It is his fear of where that nature might lead him in the future.  
  
“It wasn’t your fault,’’ Martin assures fiercely. “It wasn’t. If you blame yourself I am throwing a tantrum.’’  
  
The Archivist does not say _but I enjoyed it._  
  
“Jon,’’ Martin pleads, not pulling away. “This isn’t healthy. This isn’t—sustainable. You can’t just hold my hand the entire way to the Panopticon!’’  
  
“Can’t I?’’ the Archivist asks desperately.  
  
The Archivist looks at Martin and fear curls in his gut. But it is nothing compared to the lurch of terror he has when Martin is but an inch out of his human sight. The next time, he wonders, will he be able to get Martin out of trouble? Will he want to?  
  
The Archivist imagines a future: Martin sobbing in pain as he had before, but this time the flush of satisfaction at the sight makes him decide to turn away. He thinks of Jonah and Barnabas, and wonders if in the future he will be the same as Jonah, abandoning one he loves for the pleasure of Beholding his Martin’s sweet suffering.  
  
Martin’s wrist now hurts from how tightly the Archivist holds it. He does not tell the Archivist this. He will never speak of all the ways the Archivist makes him hurt. He keeps that hurt inside, where you curl up in his chest and drink from it.  
  
“Please,’’ Martin says. “Please put my-my ability to make choices over your worry.’’  
  
“Over your safety, you mean.’’  
  
Martin takes a breath. “Yes,’’ he says. “That is what I mean.’’  
  
It is a long painful stare between them. You think about whether you want Martin to get hurt again. You are surprised to realize you don’t. He is weak to your forsaken brother, yes, and even in your world has gotten lost in the Lonely before. But you can protect him.  
  
You _will_ protect him. And since you know that, you can give him this.  
  
You pry away at the resistance in the Archivist’s mind until he lets go. Martin exhales.  
  
“Don’t go too far,’’ the Archivist says weakly.  
  
Martin waits until he is out of the room to rub his wrist and let the pain show on his face. There, with the walls between him and the Archivist, you watch him. His breathing goes ragged and his face crumples. One more wound that he hides away for fear of hurting his beloved Archivist. One more sacrifice that goes unseen.  
  
Unseen to the Archivist at least. Never to you.

* * *

  
Once Martin is out of earshot, the Archivist channels the statement you feed him. Despite his worry, he does not go immediately to Martin after. Instead, he searches around in the inner pockets of his coat, and pulls out a tape to put into the tape recorder.  
  
It is not a tape recorder you know. It is one he made in the Blinding House that infuriated you so. One that he made and then burrowed away in his coat and forgot about, until the recent incident sparked his memory.  
  
The Archivist puts the tape in, and clicks play.  
  
“ _..suppose I already knew,’’_ says the Archivist’s voice on the tape. “ _That it’s not my—it’s not my own feelings. I just didn’t want to think about it.’’_  
  
The Archivist realizes. Or rather, remembers what he had realized before.  
  
He listens, and listens again. Then stuffs his fist into his mouth, overcome with horror and sorrow. If he could still weep he would, in your world he is too changed for such a human action.  
  
For a moment you think he will tell Martin. You lurch, ready to stop him. Ready to puppet him again and close his mouth by force, if need be.  
  
Instead, he goes outside and smiles weakly at Martin.  
  
“Long one, today,’’ he tells Martin. He reaches out, but does not touch. The conflicting impulses to protect, to show affection, and to withdraw completely in horror tear at his mind. “I’m sorry. I—for earlier.’’  
  
“It’s alright,’’ Martin says, smiling as brightly as he can manage. “I understand. I’m fine.’’  
  
Martin is not fine. Martin is a firework of heartaches and terrors. However, the Archivist will not pull his secrets out of him. Instead, the Archivist puts his hands in his pockets.  
  
“Let’s move on then,’’ he says roughly.

* * *

  
For the first time, the Archivist examines his own love for Martin.  
  
He searches in your never-ending well of memories, comparing the love he feels with the love experienced by humans for any other human. He compares it to the love of parents and offspring, to the love of sexual couplings, to love of non-sexual couplings, to the love of friends, to the love of worshippers, to thousands of different loves experienced by billions of people since humans were but apes in caves.  
  
There is no match. No human love matches his feelings for Martin. Not in intensity, but also not even in category. What the Archivist feels when you look at Martin through his eyes is a sensation that a mere human brain would not be capable of experiencing.  
  
“Are you alright?’’ Martin asks him.  
  
The Archivist shakes his head. “I should be asking you that.’’  
  
“Better now. It was horrible, but I’m bouncing back.’’ -- _stop blaming yourself, I would give anything to get you to stop_ \-- “Just wish you’d tell me what’s on your mind.’’  
  
The Archivist will not tell Martin. The idea of telling Martin, hurting Martin, fills him with deeply human sadness.  
  
Now, however, whenever he touches Martin there is that fear. Worming, nagging fear. Because he does not Know the future… and he does not know if one day what he now thinks of as love for Martin might one day compel him to torture and devour Martin, bit by bit.  
  
And he redirects. You urge him to kiss or touch, but when he leans in the back of his head sings _wrongnobaddont_ so he gives a chaste hug instead.  
  
You writhe in frustration. The earth starts to sizzle from it, volcanoes smoking in your irritation.  
  
You consider taking direct control again. You consider pushing through and overwhelming Martin with your affection until his anguish turns a different color. You decide to be patient, so as not to startle Martin the way you did before.  
  
Still, you can’t entirely resist. You take control for brief fractions of time; stolen moments that the Archivist doesn’t seem to realize are more yours than his. Little kisses on the inside of Martin’s wrist. Winding one of his curls around the Archivist’s finger. And then, before the Archivist can redirect, you withdraw.  
  
You can be patient.

* * *

  
There _should not_ be another blind spot.  
  
You fret over this one before they get to it. You want to stop them from even getting near it—but they are already too near by the time you realize it exists. You would call in your sister of the many strings to help again, but it is too late. Your Martin and the Archivist are already standing at the threshold of being Unseen.  
  
It is not an inviting manor, this time. It is a void, its nature entirely unseeable. It reeks of your dark twin, and also of your eldest sibling, the end of all things.  
  
“Jon,’’ Martin says. “Last time--’’  
  
“I think it’s Georgie,’’ the Archivist says.  
  
“You Know that?’’  
  
“No. I just… regular human intuition. Or hope, I suppose.’’  
  
 _But you don’t want to go in,_ Martin doesn’t say. _You’re afraid._  
  
“Mikaele’s house weakened you,’’ he says instead. “You started to—you could have died.’’  
  
The Archivist nods. “Yes.’’  
  
The Archivist values self-preservation, or he would not have made it this far as an Archivist. He looks at the threshold and fears it above all else. You relax your hold on him, assured he will not cross.  
  
“We’re not going in,’’ Martin says. “It was bad enough we risked it the first time. And don’t tell me how excited you are that it’s a mystery!’’  
  
That is not where the Archivist’s mind is, though. Instead, he is looking at Martin and all the words he could think in are drowned out by his guilt.  
  
If he were truly a good person, he thinks to himself, he would take the step into this void regardless of how terrified he was for his own life. Because Martin might be in danger, and this could be the thing that saves him from you. From the Archivist himself.  
  
The Archivist thinks to himself, and decides he has not made a single “good person’’ choice in years.  
  
“Right,’’ the Archivist says, heart quailing. “Right.’’  
  
He takes one step to leave. Then, against everything you’ve ever known about your Archivist, he grabs Martin throws him into the abyss. You lurch, everything in the world reaching out to stop it—but it is too late. Before there is anything you can do, the Archivist leaps in after.  
  
You cannot scream. But for a moment, it is as though your entire being is on fire.

* * *

* * *

  
**[CLICK]**

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Melanie. Melanie.  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
Jesus, Jon! I thought you and Martin had gone to sleep. What’s this about?  
  
 **THE ARCHIVIST**  
  
I need your—I need your help. Not-! Not anything supernatural. Just moral support for a—for a… because I am a coward, even when someone I-I care about is in _danger_. I need someone to hold me to it. Before I forget. I just… I…  
  
[DEEP, SHAKING BREATH]  
  
I need to tell Martin something.

  
  
**[CLICK]**


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, so this story seems to get longer every time I try to write the next bit. Hopefully no one minds? At any rate I have almost just about written the conclusion, so it shouldn't be too much longer.

**[CLICK]  
  
[THE SOUND OF HEAVY BREATHING DROWNS OUT THE WHIRRING OF THE TAPE FOR A MOMENT. IT EVENTUALLY SUBSIDES INTO SLOW, CONTROLLED BREATHS]  
**   
  


**GEORGIE**

Alright. Let’s try again. You think the bloody Eye in the sky is in love with Martin?  
  
 **JON**  
  
[GULP, LIKE HE’S SWALLOWING WATER FROM A GLASS] Yes.  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
And you’re really sure this isn’t some kind of gay panic?  
  
 **JON**  
  
[BITTER LAUGH]. Gay people don’t become giddy with glee when they see their loving romantic partners pulled apart on a rack  
  
 **GEORGIE**  
  
Jeeeeesus.  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
 **GEORGIE**  
  
And you want to put this on the Eye’s bloody tapes because…?!  
  
 **JON**  
  
Because I’ll forget if I don’t! I… I did before. If I hadn’t made a concrete record of my thoughts I might have ended up... [GLASS CLINKING AS IT’S SET DOWN ON A TABLE, DEEP BREATH]. Yes. I think the Eye l-loves… or at least, wants Martin.  
  
[LONG PAUSE]  
  
I thought it was just me. The feeling is… closest to romantic love, I think. Out of all the different human feelings there are. It felt good. Being around Martin made me feel… no one has ever made me feel like that. Turns out, no one has ever made any human feel like that in the history of the world. I...I knew, deep down I think. But I didn’t take the time to analyze it. Because it felt good, and it wasn’t hurting anyone.  
  
I thought it wasn’t going to hurt anyone, at least.  
  
 **GEORGIE**  
  
[MERCILESS] You didn’t think Martin deserved to know?  
  
 **JON**  
  
I…  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
[SURPRISINGLY PATIENT] Georgie, please.  
  
 **JON**  
  
[RASPY] He seemed happy so I… and I was…  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
What made you change your mind about telling him, then? [PAUSE] The torture thing, then?  
  
 **JON**  
  
[MISERABLY] Yes.  
  
[LETTING IT ALL OUT] After that, I realized… even if it felt good, even if it is a kind of love I-I-I don’t know what that means for the-the object of that love.  
  
[VOICE GETTING HIGHER] Once I thought about it, I realized it felt almost just like the compulsion to read and take statements from people? But that-that led me to-to this.  
  
I thought I was doing one thing back then. But it turned out all to be the Beholding nudging me to this… ritual. To ending the world. I just couldn’t see it at the time because I didn’t understand what the Eye wants—and I still don’t.  
  
All of it… it could be-it could be the lead up to doing something… horrible with him. Another world-changing ritual, maybe? Or maybe just some way to-to harvest him to its liking?  
  
 **GEORGIE**  
  
Oh shit.  
  
 **JON**  
  
It has been urging me to-to do things… with him. Usually neutral, or even positive things? But I don’t… I don’t know its endgame. It seems to like wh-when he’s afraid, or suffering, so it… so it might want…  
  
[CRYING] You know, it’s been the first time in almost a decade that I even thought about having sex with anyone. That should have been a giant red flag but I couldn’t see it! I couldn’t see it because I’d gladly traded so much of my free will for power. And n-now I feel so… I feel so…  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
Breathe, Jon.  
  
 **JON**  
  
[SMALL] I feel so… dirty. I feel disgusting.

  
  
**[CLICK]  
  
[REWIND]**

**JON**  
  
[SMALL] I feel so… dirty. I feel digusting.

  
  
**[CLICK]  
  
[REWIND]**

**JON**  
  
[SMALL] I feel so… dirty. I feel digusting.  
  
 **GEORGIE**  
  
Oh, Jon. [SIGH, TORN BETWEEN PITY AND IRRITATION] You know that’s not your fault. But we have to tell him.  
  
 **JON**  
  
[ON THE VERGE OF TEARS] Yes.  
  
 **MELANIE**  
  
Not when you’re like this, though. Christ. Get some sleep. Now that we know and you have your… record, you can take some time to calm down. When you wake up we can figure out how we’re gonna--

  
  
**[CLICK]  
  
[REWIND]**

**JON**  
  
[SMALL] I feel so… dirty.

  
  
**[CLICK]  
  
[REWIND]**

**JON**  
  
[SMALL] I feel so…

  
  
**[CLICK]**

**  
[MARTIN DRAWS IN A HIGH PITCHED BREATH]**

* * *

* * *

  
By the time Martin comes out off the blind spot, you have had time to think and to prepare.  
  
It is not your nature, to plan and act. It is your nature to wait and watch as things unfold. But the loss of your Martin and your Archivist from your sight has lit a fire under you.  
  
Your servant Magnus called you on to create a world insulated against death. In this world, you could watch your Martin for millennia. You could have the Archivist lead him through landscape after landscape chasing that poor hope of his. You could watch how Martin grows and changes from moment to moment, and savor each new evolution of what he becomes.  
  
But right now they are gone from your world. Where they are, they could die. They will die given enough time. Martin could die inside there, and there would be no more of that uniquely beautiful fear. No more of those strange No more logging the feeling of his curls wrapping around the Archivist’s fingers. No more looking over his shoulder to read his poetry.  
  
This, you cannot accept.  
  
You cannot make them come out. But you can prepare for if—for when they do.  
  
You find every single blindspot in the world while they are gone. It is difficult—you cannot see within them, but you can map their edges. Once they are thus mapped, you call upon all your powers and the help of your siblings to seal them away.  
  
The Blinding House is now surrounded by a domain of endless mazes, one impenetrable to your Archivist and to any other Avatar not of the spiral. A deep chasm on Hill Top road is now deep underground, where you will never let anyone find it. There are other blindspots, and in this manner you seal them each up one by one.  
  
As for the void that just took your Martin and the Archivist—you leave it open, only so they can come back out. But your plotting sister weaves her trap in wait for the moment they do. Once the Archivist and Martin emerge, nothing will come in or out ever again.  
  
Your weaving sister, too, is the one who promises to draw them out. For her strings lie even beyond your sight, into the dark and into the spiraled neurons of the human mind—or wrapped within the whirring of tape recorders.

She can pull upon her threads where you cannot reach. She can make tape recorders turn on when they would otherwise lay unfound. She can yank at the electric wires that string together a human mind, so that all the mind knows is pain and fear and the desire to run—so that they forget they are running back into a hell outside.  
  
And so, in this fashion, Martin comes out. Alone.

* * *

  
This, you did not expect.  
  
His breathing is ragged. He trembles as he runs. You look into his mind, but he is beyond words as you are often beyond words. There is only fear. This fear takes the shape of sorrow, of guilt that dwarfs all ability to string thoughts into a logical order. You look, and look, but you may as well be looking into the infinite maze that is your ever-twisting sibling.  
  
And Martin hurts. You cannot tell why he hurts: it is blocked from you, another blindspot. But it writhes in him, sinking roots into every corner of his being and growing into the greatest hurt of Martin’s life.  
  
(Where is the Archivist?)  
  
Martin walks from the Blindspot first. Then, he runs. He runs, and runs, until he reaches a corner of the vast. Then, he falls to his knees, and looks up.  
  
Looks at _you._  
  
(You could use the Archivist to calm him, to soothe that melody back to the gentle fear of before. Where is the Archivist?)  
  
He looks at you in the sky. You gaze at him, but now since he does not look away your gaze rips through his being as the light of the sun rips through human vision. You See him, All of him, and again you are transfixed by all of the pain and terror that is Martin Blackwood. Finally, his thoughts start to form words.  
  
 _Doesn’t—of course—stupid—I was stupid—disgusting—horrible—how could I—never loved—_  
  
Your gaze is ripping into Martin. Hurting. But he does not look away, as all other mortal creatures naturally do under your gaze. Slowly, he starts dissolve as Jude Perry and Jared Hopworth did.  
  
“Jon,’’ that’s Martin’s voice now, a wretched noise that barely makes it past his throat. There are tears slowly making it down his face. “JonjonjonImsosorry-’  
  
(Where is the Archivist, he should be here--)  
  
You are transfixed. But you realize if you keep looking at Martin like this, there will soon not be a Martin for you to love.  
  
You have never once, in your existence, turned your eyes away from something. And you cannot now. Still, you reel. You don’t want to annihilate Martin. You don’t want him to stop existing in your world.  
  
So you do what you thought impossible. What you have never even considered for a second in the long span of your existence. For the briefest, most horrendous moment in your entire existence, you blink.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I really thought this would be a short fic. Like an idiot. But somehow stuff I planned to take One chapter doesn't seem to make sense until I have written enough to turn into Two chapters. (sigh). 
> 
> I'm having fun though. Hopefully all of you are too!

**[CLICK]  
**

**JON**

Okay, okay. [DEEP BREATH] Second day of… second day in Georgie’s safe area. Second day cut off from the Beholding. Right now, my memory is… it seems to be mostly intact. I… remember telling Melanie and Georgie, yesterday. Today I need to tell... Martin.

...is it some cosmic manipulation, that thought of telling him makes me feel sick? [LAUGH] No, no… there is no Eye here. Just my own reluctance to face the consequences of my failings. And, and also… [DEEP BREATH]

He’s going to be so hurt? I don’t want to hurt him. This can't be the Eye. This is… this, at least, is me. Jonathan Sims. Completely myself, and the idea of hurting Martin like this feels like it could kill me. Because, even if it’s not romantic, even if it’s not the same as, as what Martin feels… I—he has always— [STRAINED] no one else has ever…

[SILENCE, CHOOSING NOT TO COMPLETE THE THOUGHT] Would I ever have noticed anything valuable about him, without the Eye? Even in a platonic sense? Maybe not, but even if that’s what got me to this point, I think--

**[DOOR OPENING]**

**GEORGIE**

Jon! Are you still he—Christ, again with the tape recorder?

**JON**

[DEFENSIVE] I need to—if there isn’t a record, then I won’t be able to-

**GEORGIE**

[UNCONVINCED]Right.

**JON**

Anyway what’s-[PAUSE, THEN SOFTLY] How is Martin?

**GEORGIE**

...Come on out. Sit down and eat something first.

**JON**

Georgie? [PANIC QUICKLY RISING] Georgie what happened?! Where is he? Did he—oh god, did he overhear what I said?

**GEORGIE**

Jon...

**JON**

[DOESN’T NEED KNOWING POWERS] Oh god.

**GEORGIE**

It’s, um.

**JON**

[MUFFLED, AS THOUGH HE’S BURIED HIS FACE WITH HIS HANDS] I’m an idiot. I’m—Christ Georgie, what am I going to say?

**GEORGIE**

He’s not—he can’t-- [SIGH] This is _not_ gonna be a good time.

**JON**

[FEAR] What?

**GEORGIE**

It’s-- [DEEP BREATH]. Alright, you know what? This is personal. That thing doesn’t get to hear this part. Turn it off.

**JON**

But…

**GEORGIE**

Off!

  
  
**[CLICK]**   
  


* * *

* * *

In the space between closing and opening all of your eyes, you begin to die, and the Eldest of your kind waits.  
  
Your eldest sibling is not like you. It is not even as like you as the others. It does not think or plan, as your string-weaving sister. It does not dream or lie as your ever-twisting sibling. It does not seek out mysteries or new information.  
  
The Eldest does not Know, save for one thing.  
  
 _(THE MOMENT-)_  
  
As the Eldest does not Know (save for its one truth) it cannot distinguish you from anything else that exists. You may as well be any other entity, any other wretched mortal creature. What it does Know of you is he same thing that it knows about every other being that exists throughout the cosmos.  
  
You will End. All will End. Every creature that draws breath, that pulses, that grows and changes and fears and Knows—all of them will fall to death.  
  
This fact reduces you. In the face of the Eldest, you are a small worming thing struggling to get away from this terrible knowledge.  
  
 _(THE MOMENT YOU DIE--)_  
  
All life, all ability to think or discover or know, will dwindle. Every last eye. Every last mind. Every last human. All ability to know and learn and watch and fear and (love) will sputter out like the last of the stars.  
  
The one you love, too, will End. And then you will follow.  
  
 _(THE MOMENT YOU DIE IS--)_  
  
It is the first terrible knowledge you ever knew. Now, it is the first knowledge to make you recoil. Every part of you revolts against it, rejecting what you know and shoving it away as much as you can.  
  
You will not let this happen, you decide.  
  
You think of Martin, and open your eyes.

* * *

  
You closed your eyes for four seconds, more or less. The length of a few human heartbeats, or a deep breath.  
  
A meaningless instant to all other beings. To you, it is the loss of an infinity of information.  
  
Everything that existed in that moment—you will never Know it. Every subtle fluctuation of light and air pressure within every square inch of the atmosphere. Every change in temperature. Every sensation. Every scrap of longing or pain or terror. Every gasp, every tear. All of it is lost to you forever.  
  
It hurts. It hurts in a way you didn’t know you could be hurt. It tastes like the burning of statements, but so much worse. You are weakened. You are hungry. For a moment, your sight—your connection to all senses of every being—is blurred, and you cannot make things out clearly.  
  
Your grasp on the world slips. You scramble to tighten back around it. Your vision clears, and you start to search.  
  
You see Martin—alive—and you know you would do it again.  
  
He is collapsed where you nearly razed him to the ground, lying on his side. You can see the slow rise and fall of his chest, and through the barren earth you can hear his pulse thrumming.  
  
For a moment you think he has fallen into unconsciousness. But then you see that his eyes are wide open, staring into the distance with no thoughts stirring behind them. Your greedy forsaken brother has swarmed to him again, nipping at the corners of his mind—ever eager to take from Martin until there is nothing left in his but the coldest monochrome.  
  
But your brother will not have Martin. Martin is yours.  
  
You want to touch him with human hands, to hold him until the cold and fog goes away. If only the Archivist were here, you could use his arms and his hands. But the Archivist is gone. So instead, you use what you have left of his voice.  
  
Martin does not notice you manifesting the tape recorder just out of his line of sight. But when he hears the click, followed by his and the Archivist’s voice, he  
flinches.  
  
 _“I’m sure I love you” – “I love you too.’’_  
  
A shudder runs through Martin’s body. The fog clears in his mind. He is awake: mind clear, eyes focused, emotions sharpening in his chest.  
  
This is good. You rewind and play the moment again.  
  
 _“I’m sure I love you” – “I love you too.’’_  
  
Martin rises, looking around until he sees the tape recorder on the floor. He is still beyond words, his feelings too electric to wrestle into such human constraints. But when he looks at the tape recorder his face crumples and something boils over inside.  
  
You replay it again. Just the Archivist’s voice this time.  
  
 _“I love you too.’’_  
  
Martin crawls towards the tape before reaching for it with one hand. You keep replaying the Archivist’s voice, but only the important part now.  
  
 _“I love you--’’_ Click, rewind. _“I love you--’’_ Click, rewind. _“I love you--’’_  
  
You see Martin’s expression right as he grabs the tape recorder. His face is contorted into a brutal, imperious thing. Only then do you recognize the emotional electricity coursing though him as anger.  
  
He bashes the tape recorder against the ground.  
  
“Shut up,’’ he hisses. “Shut up! Shut—up!’’  
  
You freeze. You don’t understand this. You can see the rage, you Know it as surely as you know all things about Martin. But the reason for it is tied up in that damned blindspot where the Archivist still waits, so you cannot see it.  
  
If the Archivist were here, you could have him ask. You could discover and learn what has caused this. But without such a vessel, you are almost voiceless. With nothing else to try, you rewind again.  
  
 _“I love you—’’_  
  
Martin’s rage is murderous. He bashes the recorder furiously against the ground again, and again. As though it were a living thing he could kill.  
  
“How dare you?’’ he asks, pathetic at first and then screaming. “How dare you?!’’  
  
You keep trying.  
  
 _“I love you— I love you—I love you—”_  
  
Until it breaks, and there is no sound on that lonely patch of earth but the sound of Martin’s heaving sobs. Finally his feelings turn into thoughts, and then into words.  
  
 _Jon never loved me._  
  
But this is untrue. You Know the Archivist loves Martin, because you love Martin, and the Archivist is an extension of yourself. What happened to make your Martin convinced of such a sad falsehood?  
  
 _I want to die. I want it all to be over._  
  
You recoil at this. For a moment, it is as though the Eldest looms in your vision again. The air whips around Martin in response, the earth around him rumbling. Martin notices, but barely pays these gestures of yours any mind.  
  
 _I was dying, wasn’t I? When I looked--  
  
\--the Eye. It almost killed me._  
  
Martin stands up and turns around. You see the plan forming in his head. A quick, desperate thing. He fiercely sticks his head up, trying to make his eyes meet yours—trying to re-create the circumstances that nearly killed him.  
  
You will not have it.  
  
It is too difficult to look away, or blink. But after the last time, you find yourself curiously ready and able to act before you become transfixed. The world is still yours, weakened though you are, and that includes earth and stone. So it responds to your will and seizes him, dragging him down to his knees before crawling over his shoulders and wrangling him so that he drawn down upon his hands.  
  
Martin keens in panic. You cannot even enjoy on the sweetness of it. Instead every bit of you is aflame, burning at the possibility that he might slip out of your grip. That you will lose him.  
  
(You will not lose him to the End of things.)  
  
Even where you cradle him like this, he tries to turn his head and eyes up. You seize him by the head as well, acting in harmony with your earthen, suffocating brother. In this way, you force his head down, making him look at the stone ground beneath him.  
  
Martin struggles and cries out. He does not actually think you can hear or understand him, or that anyone around here can. Still, his screaming turns into words  
  
“No! Let me go, let me go!’’  
  
You wish you had a human voice near here that you could seize. That you could use to explain to him that this, at least, you do to preserve him and not to torture him. Instead, the tape recorder fixes itself back together. The tape screeches and you rewind through it, trying to find the best moment to address this.  
  
You settle on an exchange between the Archivist and Martin. You play, and their voices sing out.  
  
 _“Y-Yes. It – It doesn’t want to harm me.’’  
  
“And me?”  
  
“I won’t let it.”_  
  
Click, rewind.  
  
 _“I won’t let it.’’_  
  
Martin fights harder at first, hearing this. You see how much he wants to bash the tape recorder into pieces. Instead, he thrashes himself into exhaustion and is reduced to shallow, quick breaths and tears.  
  
You realize after a moment that there is another way to do this--one that will hurt Martin less, leave him less afraid. It surprises you, that you think of any way to do something that causes less fear.  
  
It surprises you even more that you do it.  
  
You bring walls up around him. The scenery shifts, the air bending with static, and now he is in another domain. Under the ground, walls on every side and no windows to see the sky, but with space to move around. You fill the room with comforts. A clean bed. Pillows. The notebook you got him before. Then, you slowly let go of his body.  
  
There is only a moment of relief before Martin throws himself at the walls, banging and scraping.  
  
“Let me die. Just let me die.’’  
  
You replay the tape.  
  
 _“I won’t let—I won’t let—I won’t let--’’_  
  
With nothing left he can do, Martin screams.

O

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	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, I posted this on dreamwidth before the new episode came out with Melanie and Georgie saving people. I am gratified at how close I was. 
> 
> Not chapter warnings besides story typical emotional anguish, full on melodrama, and Beholding disrespecting Jon's autonomy.

## TAPE 1

* * *

  
**[CLICK]  
  
[MUFFLED SHOUTING FROM ANOTHER ROOM. THEN, A DOOR BURSTS OPEN LEAVING THE SOUNDS CRYSTAL CLEAR.]**

**  
JON**

\--don’t understand! You don’t know what’s out there!  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
\--do not! Jon, for once in your life, just--

  
  
**[SOUND OF HIM COLLIDING WITH SOMEONE, THEN A RUSTLE LIKE SOMEONE HAS GRABBED HIM BY THE ARM.]**

**MELANIE**  
  
Jon, please. Wait.  
  
**JON**  
  
[SHOVING HER OFF]You don’t understand. He was—it… you don’t know what it’ll do to him! I can’t—I can’t let--  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Then for his sake, do not rush out and get re-possessed!  
  
**JON**  
  
[VOICE BREAKING] But I have to. It’s my fault. He deserves--  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
He deserves not having you become the thing that _eats_ him!

  
  
**[JON STOPS. HE DRAWS IN A RAGGED BREATH.]**

  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
...You almost ran out without your tapes. You wouldn’t have been able to remember.  
  
**JON**  
  
[WEAKLY] I… I wouldn’t have.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Look we—we can try and find a way to get him back. But let’s slow down. Come up with a plan first?  
  
**JON**  
  
[SMALL] Okay. I—okay. [STRAINED BREATH] How did he—how do you know where he…?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
He left a note.

  
**  
[LONG PAUSE.]**

  
  


**JON**

I can’t do anything right, can I?  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Jon, self-flagellation won't--  
  
**JON**  
  
I did this to him. I drove him away.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
No. No you didn’t. [EXHALE] Georgie found spiders crawling around the note, and the tapes.  
  
**JON**  
  
Oh. _Oh._  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Jon, it’s not your fault. Not this. Beating yourself up won’t--[EXASPERATED SIGH] No one wants you to destroy yourself, Jon. Especially not for no foreseeable gain. It’s not… Shit.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Georgie?  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Who turned that tape recorder on?

  
  
**[** **LONG, WEIGHTED** **PAUSE.]**

**JON**

I didn’t—I wasn’t even here until a minute ago.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Right! Off you go then.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]**

**JON**

That’s… incredible. How-how many people have you saved, then?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
[SIGH] Not as many as we hoped at first.  
  
**JON**  
  
Because the Powers stop you?  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
No, because usually the process usually kills them, Jon. Just like it killed Alex. It leaves them empty and they just…  
  
**JON**  
  
...wither away. Because the Eye has no use for them without their fear. No need to keep them alive.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Also they don’t move, or do… anything, if Georgie’s thing hits them too hard. And you have to walk through the rift on Hilltop Road yourself, out of your own volition. Otherwise it won’t work.  
  
**JON**  
  
Just like quitting the Institute. [PAUSE] But what if Martin can’t survive? What if it just--  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Well, Martin seems to already be able to move freely… as long as you’re with him. But maybe even without you, since the Eye is odd about him. Since he’s not trapped in a fear domain we might not have to...[FABRIC RUSTLES, LIKE SOMEONE’S SLEEVE WAS JUST CLUTCHED]Melanie?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Wait.

  
  
**[THEY STOP. IN THE SILENCE, THE WHIRRING OF THE TAPE RECORDER IS APPARENT. JON INHALES SHARPLY.]**

**MELANIE**

Hear that?  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Fuck off. Fuck _off._ [CHAIR SCREECHING, STANDING UP]We locked it away, we double-checked. Where is the damn thing?

  
  
**[WALKING AROUND, RUSTLING AND DRAWERS OPENING AS SHE LOOKS]**

**JON**

I didn’t—it wasn’t me. I promise, I didn’t--  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
We know, we know. [BITTER LAUGH] But that doesn’t make it any better.

  
  
**[DRAWER OPENING, SUDDENLY GEORGIE’S VOICE IS IN CLEAR FOCUS]**

**GEORGIE**  
  
There you are.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]  
  
[CAREFUL FOOTSTEPS]**

**JON**

Martin? Martin? [DOOR CREAKING] Where are—ah.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Jon? It’s the middle of the--  
  
**JON**  
  
Have you seen Martin?

  
  
**[SILENCE.]**

**JON**

He was—I know we went sleep in the same room. I’ve been looking around for him but it’s dark...  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
You weren’t kidding about the memory issues. Christ.  
  
**JON**  
  
I told you about…? Oh. [GROWING REALIZATION] What… what happened? Where is he?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Sit down. Get something to drink first.  
  
**JON**  
  
No. No. If he’s gone, if he’s back out _there_ —Melanie, you don’t understand, he’s in danger! I have to--  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
[STANDING] Again, you are _not_ going _anywhere._  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Please, Jon. We’ll explain… again. Just… wait a second, you both hear that?

  
  
**[LISTENS. THE WHIRRING OF THE TAPE RECORDER EMERGES AGAIN. MELANIE LETS OUT A HISS, AND THEN STARTS TO SHUFFLE ABOUT.]**

**GEORGIE**

Again? Really? Where is it this time?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
[SHUFFLE] Found it. Off you go then.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]**

**GEORGIE**

No.  
  
**JON**  
  
[INSISTENT]I need it on recording! You just—you just saw how bad it gets.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Those things have kept turning on and trying to catch the details of everything we’re doing. I am not going to just feed everything we know to the bloody Eye.  
  
**JON**  
  
What if we get separated? And I-I don’t have a record? I’ll be completely lost.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
[QUIET BUT FIRM]I am not going to risk everyone we could save. You and Martin are not the only people in the world who still matter.  
  
**JON**  
  
I…  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Wait. Let’s… it’s already caught some of our conversation anyway. Maybe… we can discuss. Figure out what should be okay to share on record. That way Jon can have his notes, but not enough to give the important parts away. A compromise?

  
  
**[SILENCE]**

**MELANIE**

...I can’t actually see, but I get the sense you’re both giving me a look.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
I think it would be better to just— [SIGH] Okay. We should talk it out.  
  
**JON**  
  
Thank you.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
_Off-tape._  
  
**JON**  
  
Oh. Right.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]  
  
[SOUNDS OF RUNNING, ALONG WITH THE SOUND OF VARIOUS INSECTS SKITTERING.]**

**GEORGIE**

Shit, fuck, shit!  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Fucking spiders! Quick, grab the—the artifact!  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
_Which_ arti--  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Fire one! Get it!

  
  
**[RUNNING AND SCRAMBLING, FOLLOWED BY THE SOUND OF FLAME AND THE SCREECHING OF SPIDERS DYING]**

**GEORGIE**

Got it! Now we have to--  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Wait—Jon! He’s still down below.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Shit.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Jon! Jon, where—?

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]  
  
[SILENCE. OCCASIONALLY SOUNDS OF DISTANCE CHAOS FILTER IN AS THOUGH FROM A DREAM. MELANIE AND GEORGIE SHOUTING, PERHAPS—AND THE SOUND OF FIRE. EACH INTERRUPTION QUICKLY FADES BACK INTO SILENCE.]  
  
[WALKING, FLOORBOARDS CREAKING.]**

**JON**

Martin? Martin, where are you? [PAUSE] Where is everyone?

[UNCERTAIN PAUSE] Was… was there anyone else here? No. No that can’t be right. I would… [THINKS] But _he_ was here, I remember. He was just--

  
  
**[CLICK IN THE DISTANCE; ANOTHER TAPE RECORDER TURNING ON. THEN, A FAMILIAR SCREAM]**

**MARTIN [ON TAPE]**  
  
No! Let me go, Let me go!  
  
**JON**  
  
Martin! [STUMBLING, RUNNING INTO SOMETHING] Martin?! Where—Oh god.

  
  
**[CLATTERING,** **OBJECTS BEING KNOCKED TO THE FLOOR.** **THE RECORDING OF MARTIN SCREAMING AND SOBBING CONTINUES]**

**MARTIN [ON TAPE]**

Let me die. Just let me die.  
  
**JON**  
  
[PANICKING] I left him. I _left him._ Martin!

  
  
**[SOUND OF A DOOR FLINGING OPEN, FOLLOWED BY THE ROAR OF WIND FROM OUTSIDE. JON’S SHOUTS FAD** **E INTO THE NOISE** **.]**

**ANNABELLE**

Took long enough. I suppose some fish take a little more bait [VOICE CLOSER, AS THOUGH LEANING IN] You’re welcome.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
  
The Archivist finally emerges, and you seize him so tightly that his brain hemorrhages.  
  
For a moment he collapses and convulses in your grasp. Again, he has decayed in the time away from you. Your power overwhelms him now, but it is a simple thing to restore him.  
  
Blood seeps out of his eyes and nose and ears as you tinker with the mechanisms of his brain. You let it flow. He cannot die here of blood loss. He cannot die of anything, now that you have him. Once you have revitalized him enough, you allow the bleeding the to stop, and make the Archivist rise.  
  
His hand instinctively reaches for his pocket. He does not know why—he cannot remember what happened in that damned void anymore than you can see it. But you take control, and find some tapes—ones that the Archivist seems to have created himself, and one that seems to have been manifested deftly into his pocket when he wasn’t looking.  
  
You waste no time. You play it, soaking in as much information from the blind spot as the tape gives you. Right up until the last line.  
  
“ _You’re welcome.’’_  
  
You feel a brief moment of fondness for your ever-weaving helper. The Archivist smiles in reflection of your gratitude.  
  
“Thank you,’’ you say with his words.  
  
The Archivist starts to shake, even as the smile stays. You take his hands and have him play the next tape.

* * *

## TAPE 2

* * *

  
**[CLICK]**

**JON**

Alright, just the essentials then. Everything I need to keep on me, without  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
If we absolutely have to. [SIGH] Okay, so—the basics. There is a way out of this world into a dimension the fears can hardly touch.  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Georgie normally… removes a person’s fear in order to get them out. But that’s risky, and not always necessary.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
I’m not going to explain where it is, or what the path is to get there because that seems like asking for things to go south. But if you lose your way… find us. I’m immune to this hellscape, so I can take you there.  
  
**JON**  
  
And you’re certain it’s really another world? That’s not some new domain of the spiral, or a trap by… some web or desolation avatar?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
Yeah. We went there ourselves. Set up some of the people we helped out. It’s nice.  
  
**JON**  
  
Not nice enough that you stayed?  
  
**MELANIE**  
  
There are other people left to help here.  
  
**JON**  
  
Right. Right. [MOVING ON] So, if we can get Martin there, he'll be safe.  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
Yeah. But, if the Eye has taken a particular interest in him… it might be harder to get him out.  
  
**JON**  
  
But not impossible. [PAUSE] Is there more?  
  
**GEORGIE**  
  
I think that’s all that’s safe to put on these damn things.  
  
**JON**  
  
Okay then. I’ll keep these on me, along with several other reminders. That way I should have something to ground me even if the worse happens. Statement end--no. Wait. Sorry, just a habit.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
**[CLICK]**

**JON**

Alright. I have that recorded. Now this section is for you, Martin. I want to tell you all this myself. But there is a strong chance that when we meet, I won’t be able to.  
  
It’s [SIGH] I am so sorry that you had to find out the way you did. I’m sorry you—no. I’m sorry _I_ was so thoughtless. That I didn’t tell you immediately when I suspected. And I am sorry I [STRAINED] I am sorry I didn’t protect you. That I-I let you suffer. Before.  
  
I… have been thinking, and I wonder if maybe a lot of the more harmless things I was doing were hurting you as well. If some… gestures of affection were actually making you more afraid. It would make sense given the… source of those impulses. The Eye. If that’s the case I--  
  
[KEEPING IT TOGETHER] I am sorry. For all of it. [LAUGH] You’ve told me I apologize too much. I wonder if you’d say that now, say it wasn’t my fault. But even if that’s what you think hearing this… I need to say it now. While I still can.  
  
I know it’s not going to be much of a consolation. I know it’s… not the reciprocation you wanted. But I want you to know that—even here, away from the Eye. It’s—I’m… [DEEP BREATH]  
  
You are still my reason. For everything.  
  
Don’t let whatever’s out there let you feel worthless or alone. Because neither of those things are true.  
  
And Martin? If you have to leave me behind, if you have to do worse to get away to safety… Anything it takes. Do it.  
  
Please.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

* * *

  
You have the Archivist remove the tape. You consider it with his eyes, feeling its weight in his hands.

If Martin hears this, he will leave your world. This, you cannot allow. This, you could not _bear._

That your Archivist would conspire to remove Martin from your sight infuriates you. The Archivist feels your fury like a brand pressed to his skull. He cannot scream, but he quails under it. His knees shake and then buckle, and your rage courses through every nerve in his body.

You cannot stay angry with your Archivist, however. It would be meaningless to the point of comical—as silly as a human raging at its left eye for experiencing a twitch. Instead, you cease your rage, and turn your attention to what must be done next.

Again, you focus the Archivist’s eyes on the tape.

It is against your nature to destroy an artifact of knowledge. Not that destroying this tape would remove this information from you, no. You will always Know what has been recorded here. If you wanted, you could even re-create that knowledge on an entirely new tape. Still, destroying an original artifact of information will hurt.

Closing your eyes had hurt as well, but you survived.

You press the Archivist’s thumbs upon the tape, and move to break it. The Archivist flinches. Every nerve in his body lights up in fear, in objection. Every point in his body is as pins and needles. The muscles in his hands turn to jelly, unwilling to enact your will.

This, the Archivist thinks, is himself—he words, his feelings, his wants. Everything in him wails at the idea of all that being destroyed.

It is fitting, you think, that you and he should hurt for Martin. You open the Archivist’s mouth, and have him speak with you as you had him speak the words of the ritual countless days ago.

“Yes,’’ you say. “Martin is the reason.’’

The cassette tape breaks in the Archivist’s hands, and crumbles to dust.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> \--non-consensual kissing and touching, though nothing below the belt.  
> \--I'm never gonna write sex of any kind in this fic, which also means there will never be outright rape. Still, the Beholding is pretty clear about wanting it regardless of anyone else's wishes.  
> \--Honestly this whole chapter felt like is a level of creepy beyond previous chapters so... be warned.

Even buried in his door-less cell, Martin can see that he is being watched.  
  
He sees your eyes in the corner of his sight. They close wherever he turns his head, and hundreds more to open up behind his back.  
  
There is a bed, but Martin will not lie on it. There are books, but he will not read them. There is a kettle ready with tea, but he will not drink it.  
  
 _You can’t trust comfort,_ he thinks, repeating it so no other thoughts can come in. _You can’t trust comfort._  
  
He stays on the floor, squeezing his eyes shut. He rocks back and forth, arms wrapping around himself. The temperature is finely tuned to his comfort, and yet he shivers.

* * *

  
The Archivist cannot stop, or even slow his steps.  
  
He is aware of you, the force of your will threading into his own. Each new step sends a wave of fear and despair through him. Each step makes him think _stop, stop_ —as though thinking it hard enough will stop his inevitable tread forward.  
  
He can feel Martin’s terror like the pull of gravity. And like a comet to the sun, he cannot but be drawn faster and faster in.

* * *

  
There is a special joy from finally seeing Martin with the Archivist’s eyes. You surge in his blood, wanting to do nothing but take in all Martin is for the rest of eternity.  
  
“Martin,’’ the Archivist breathes, and drops to crouch beside him  
  
Martin opens his eyes. You look into his eyes through the Archivist’s and you hear _love_ and _fear_ and _love_ so powerful Martin could break under it.  
When the Archivist’s hand touches him, Martin gives a full-bodied shudder.  
  
 _Don’t trust comfort. Don’t trust comfort._  
  
“Is it you?’’ Martin asks, voice rough. “Are you yourself?’’  
  
“Of course.’’ The Archivist’s hand squeezes his shoulder. You rub his thumb in circles, savoring the prickling goosebumps that trail down Martin’s arm. “It’s always been me.’’  
  
A small indulgence, still too much too soon. Martin knows instantly.  
  
He bolts. You grab him with the Archivist’s body, wrestling him back down. He shrieks in response, high-pitched like a kettle whistle.  
  
“Martin.’’ You have the Archivist pin his arms down. “Martin, wait. Listen.’’  
  
“Shut up! You’re not him, you’re not—’’  
  
You press the Archivist’s mouth into his.  
  
It is a holy thing, to feel Martin’s lips as you swallow his scream. To feel his broken love and his horror both sing through where your skin touches. The Archivist’s nauseated objections are washed away under the purity of your joy, like a teardrop before a tidal wave.  
  
Then, unable to get away, Martin bites.  
  
You freeze for a second in surprise, and then in delight at the viciousness of it. Martin shoves the Archivist off, and there is real force behind it: hatred and anger burning into the Archivist's skin.  
  
“Martin.’’ You keep the Archivist’s voice as soft as possible. “It’s me. This is real.’’  
  
Martin recoils. You could pin him down again. But something tender washes over you, so instead you gently reach out.  
  
“Wait,’’ you tell him. “We love you. Stay.’’  
  
Martin runs.

* * *

  
You could collapse the walls in on him as you did before. You could shackle him with a thought, pull him down and bind him so he could scarcely twitch through whatever you decided to do to him.  
  
You still might, you think.  
  
But for now, Martin’s steps are fueled by hope, and you love his hope. You love to watch it lick at his heels, whipping him further and further into a desperate frenzy of futile action.  
  
You close in his rat maze and let him run through it. He reaches a door slams it behind. He throws his weight against it, eyes darting it around the room. You have the Archivist there in a fraction of a second, gently placing his hand on the door where you know Martin’s rests on the other side.  
You splay the Archivist’s fingers to match his, as though you could press hands together through the wood.  
  
“Martin,’’ you have the Archivist say. “You’re upset, and that’s okay. But you don’t have to be alone. Open the door.’’  
  
Martin instead bars the door with everything there is in that room. Adorably and nonsensically human of him. The lips Archivist’s face twists into a smile.  
  
“We love you,’’ you tell him again. “So, so much.’’  
  
 _Lies, lies. Don’t trust it,_ Martin thinks. He searches the room for weapons, for defense, for anything. _Can’t trust comfort. Can’t trust comfort._  
  
“This isn’t a lie,’’ you say. It is so hard, to funnel the immensity of your feelings and knowledge into human language, but you do your best. “This is the truest thing in this world. You don’t have to run away from comfort.’’  
  
 _What is strong against the Eye?_ Martin’s mind reels, struggling to recall. _Darkness, Helen, lies, web, broken cameras, Georgie--_  
  
Nothing on the list includes ordinary doors, or chairs in front of them.  
 _How is it keeping him out, then? Nothing here should be able to block him out. So why--?_  
  
You are in the room in an instant as he thinks it, laying a hand on his shoulder from behind.  
  
“The door can’t do anything, no,’’ you say. “Just wanted to see how long it would take you to realize it.’’  
  
Martin lurches away. His head meets the back of the wall. You reach for him again, but do not touch yet. You instead savor this, watching him and all of the different fears and denials that rush through his expression as the Archivist’s hand draws closer.  
  
“Jon,’’ he says. “Jon—can you even still hear me?’’  
  
“The Archivist can hear and see almost anything in the world,’’ you tell him, bemused. “He’s also right here. So of course.’’  
  
Martin’s wants to spit at you and scream curses, but he swallows his rage. He turns his head away, and presses his back into the wall, as though he could vanish into the stone.  
  
“I’m sorry,’’ he says. “I’m so sorry.’’  
  
You tilt the Archivist’s head at him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.’’  
  
 _Ignore him. Ignore the monster,_ Martin resolves. _Only talk to Jon._  
  
“I told you stay.’’ Martin’s knees are shaking so it’s a miracle he can still stand. “I didn’t want this.’’  
  
“I couldn't leave you.’’  
  
Martin doesn’t believe for a second that those are actually the Archivist’s words. But he’s too tired to do anything but flinch when the Archivist’s hand cups his cheek.  
  
“We’ll make it better,’’ Martin says. “I promise I’ll fix it.’’  
  
“There’s nothing to fix.’’  
  
Martin puts his hands on you (on the Archivist) of his own accord. You soar at the touch, your giddiness turning into the most absurd mix between a giggle and a squeal spilling from the Archivist’s throat.  
  
Then, Martin roughly shoves the Archivist away, and runs

* * *

  
There is nowhere to go. No way out. No place here where he can hide from your sight. Martin realizes it long before he accepts it.  
  
 _Keep running_ is what he thinks. _Delay until you can figure out a plan. Think. Free Jon._  
  
In your world, Martin need never run out of air, or feel his muscles giving out. No one in your world is bound by such restrictions. Rather, the moment he no longer can run is a moment of pure mental exhaustion: despair and fear choking him so he can no longer breathe or move.  
  
He leans against the wall for support. His mind flickers from plans, to daydreams.  
In the past, his escape had been romantic fantasies. Saving the world and kissing the Archivist. Now he slips into one of self-sacrifice. A knife, a rush of blood, and then his suffering would be done and his _Jon_ would be free.  
  
 _I shouldn’t have left Georgie’s place,_ Martin thinks. _Would have been able to die. Jon would have forgotten, eventually._  
  
You go cold. You have the Archivist with him in an instant.  
  
“Don’t,’’ you murmur, bringing the Archivist’s lips to his hair. “Don’t you dare even think it.’’  
  
Martin can’t run. But he shoves away, and stumbles forward.  
  
The Archivist follows at a polite distance.

* * *

  
This place is not of your twisting sibling, for all its doors and corridors. It is easily mapped out in Martin’s head as he runs. In fact, it’s trick is the opposite of the spiraled corridors. Every round Martin makes through this new underground, the entire path is shorter.  
  
Enclosure. Suffocation. Slowly being trapped closer and closer to what you fear. _Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe._  
  
The space shrinks with each new realization, doors and corridors vanishing from where he had passed them last.  
  
 _Find a weapon, fight—no. Door out, Helen—fire? No._  
  
 _No way out. Wouldn’t allow a way out. Stupid._  
  
 _What if I can’t think of a plan? What if I’m too stupid and he forces Jon to--_  
  
The Archivist’s footsteps always ring in Martin’s ears, ever gaining on him.

* * *

  
Martin thinks about blinding he Archivist. Cutting into Melanie’s leg had cut her off from the violence singing inside of her, after all. Perhaps the Archivist would even forgive him, when the alternative is so bleak.  
  
There are no sharp objects to use. Not even a pen. But when the last hallway leaves only the Archivist waiting at its end, Martin finally gets desperate enough to realize he technically doesn’t need a weapon.  
  
“Martin, love,’’ you have the Archivist say. “Do you understand yet?’’  
  
Martin glances behind. The hallway he came from is replaced by a solid wall. He thinks again about Melanie, and steps closer. The Archivist beams happily.  
  
Martin tries to make it a sudden movement when he grabs the Archivist. Of course, you see it coming moments before, and grinningly let it happen. He clamps hands around the Archivist’s head. Thumbs free and trembling.  
  
“Jon. Jon I… I… I’ll...’’  
  
You thrill at the touch and raise the Archivist’s hands to brush his knuckles against Martin’s cheek. Martin’s hands clamp down harshly in response.  
  
“Stop that,’’ he hisses. “Stop it.’’  
  
Martin is talking to you. Not to the Archivist, but you directly. You could melt.  
  
“Martin,’’ you say. “We missed you.’’  
  
“You know,’’ he rasps. “You can see everything. You can see in my head. You know what I’m planning.’’  
  
“Yes. Of course.’’  
  
“You’re not going to try to stop me?’’  
  
“Martin, _Martin._ ’’ You revel in the feeling of his name on the Archivist’s lips and tongue. “Can you? Can you look into these eyes and put them out?’’  
  
You lean the Archivist into his touch, and look at him adoringly.  
  
“You don’t think I can.’’  
  
“Honestly? I don’t know,’’ you admit. “We see nearly all that is and was, but none can know what is to be. We can see how little you want to do it, but you have always surprised us, Martin.’’  
  
Martin’s hands shake.  
  
“What will you do next? We don’t know. We can’t. Even with all we know of you, your constant evolutions are a...’’ you trail off, before smiling. “A mystery!’’  
  
“A mystery.’’  
  
“Yes, exactly,’’ you say. “Picture: the feeling of soft optical tissue giving away under your fingers. Screaming in your ears. Sobbing. The Archivist struggling to get free of your grip. How could you ever? How could ‘Jon’ forgive putting him through that?’’  
  
Martin inhales sharply.  
  
“But perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps the Archivist will never forgive you if you don’t. Perhaps he’ll always think, deep down, that the real reason you never even tried is because you were afraid he’d stop loving you.’’  
  
Martin’s fear flares beautiful colors for a moment. Oh, how you love to watch it. Pain, terror, self-loathing, guilt—and then, it all goes cold. Martin lets go, disgusted.  
  
“It wouldn’t work then,’’ he says. “You wouldn’t sit here and taunt me about it if I could take away Jon.’’  
  
He figured it out so quickly, too. Your smile dims on the Archivist’s face, and you whine at the loss of his fear and his touch. “Maybe I would,’’ you say. “Maybe the Archivist isn’t as important to us as you think.’’  
  
Martin shoves his hands into his pockets and looks at you flatly. You huff.  
  
“Fine, fine, you solved the puzzle. You’re right. If you plucked out the Archivist’s eyes… it would hurt momentarily, but they would grow back. It’s not about physical eyes, never was. It’s about choice, and the Archivist already made his.’’ You pause. “But we really wanted to see what you would do.’’  
  
Martin steps back. The tunnel with him and the Archivist is even smaller now. His breath quickens.  
  
“Why?’’ he asks. “You didn’t have to do any of this! You didn’t, this is—letting me run? Tricking me into thinking Jon lo--tricking Jon into… into doing all of…? Why?’’

In answer, you lean the Archivist in for a kiss. Martin jumps back, but his head meets the wall and you grab him.  
  
“Because we love you.’’  
  
“No you don’t. Love is—Love is the opposite of this!’’  
  
In response, you just nuzzle the Archivist head into his neck, planting a kiss there. You hum pleasantly as you see how the kiss makes fear shudder through his nerve endings. Martin tries to shove you away, but there is no more hope behind the gesture, so you stop allowing it.  
  
“We love you so much,’’ you say. “You have no idea how loved you are.’’  
  
“Stop!’’ Martin’s breath hitches. “Don’t touch me.’’  
  
“But we want to.’’  
  
“This—no! You’re a—you’re a fear go--enti--thing! You can’t p-possibly want to--this is ridiculous!’’ The air feels too thin in his lungs. He turns to bargaining. “What do you _really_ want from me?’’  
  
“Everything.’’You kiss him through his high pitched wheezes. “Everything you have.’’  
  
“Please, stop.’’ Begging now, tears prickling in his eyes. “Stop touching me. I’ll do anything--’’  
  
“You already do everything I want,’’ you tell him. “You are you.’’  
  
The walls and ceiling veer ever closer as Martin is lost in the throes of his panic attack. You press the Archivist’s lips to him again and again, reveling in each new burst of feeling from him.  
  
“Please. He doesn’t want to.’’ Tears are rolling now. His limbs are locking up, too panicked and tired to shove back. “I’ll—I’ll… whatever you want. Just not with Jon. He doesn’t want to.’’  
  
“Yes he does,’’ you explain, prying open the first button of his shirt. “The Archivist wants everything we want. He’s enjoying this as he enjoys the fear of all there is in the world.’’  
  
Martin’s throat makes incomprehensible sounds. You start to open the next button, and he limply grabs the Archivist’s wrist. His eyes dart about, but he can’t stop meeting your gaze, for your eyes are everywhere. Their gaze shoots through him like icicles, and he knows that every moment of his humiliation will be watched and catalogued. It is one more fear that rises in his throat to choke him, that shudders through him to lock up all of his limbs.  
  
“Not with Jon. Not with Jon.’’  
  
“But you love the Archivist,’’ you say.  
  
“Jon.'' The words barely make it out. “I’m sorry. Not your fault. I’m sorry.’’  
  
Finally, at last, Martin understands completely. He has nothing: nowhere to run, nothing to fight with, nothing to bargain with. No way he can stop this, or anything that happens in your world. He freezes: muscles clenching as they did when he was a child waiting for his mother to strike. He makes no more move to stop you.  
  
“There we are,’’ you say. “Martin, sweet Martin.’’  
  
But as you kiss him again, everything goes cold.

* * *

  
It’s a memory that stops you.  
  
A single moment, perfectly preserved: Martin watching the Archivist trudging forward, and the Archivist looking back. No touch, no grand gesture of love, no heroic rescues. Just a small, reciprocated smile.  
  
This plays in Martin’s mind. You see it, and the Archivist see it. His own memory mirrors it, playing the exact same moment from a different view.  
  
It was not a moment of pure joy. Martin had been worn and shaken. Terrified, because Martin was always terrified. And yet the simple joy of having _Jon_ look back at him and smile had somehow allowed him happiness in hell.  
  
You look down and see Martin choking out sobs and snotty tears. You also see the Martin of that day, in love and happy, and the images overlay. You can catalog every different between them.  
  
Martin, frightened and cowed. Martin, happy and in love. Martin ashen, clammy, and sobbing. Martin bright and smiling.  
  
You love his fear. But you love his happiness. But you love his fear. But you love--  
  
Deep in your core, something rips in two.

* * *

  
The Archivist can’t stop his hands as they move along Martin’s skin. But neither can you stop him from feeling, and his feelings reverberate back into your core. They find something unexpected in you to harmonize with until it's all that you hear.  
  
“I...’’ Stomach twisting, throat closing. “We can’t...’’  
  
Martin may never smile at you in that way again. The loss hits, and everything in your vision swims.  
  
You stop.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay getting this up guys. Holiday month was busy :'D
> 
> The good news is that now I have 1.5 chapters written after this, and so updates should resume their regularity. Also, yes. Yes, I did bump up the number of chapters again. (Screams into a pillow) this was supposed to be a 5 chapter fic.
> 
> Warnings this chapter: story-typical nonconsensual touching and creepiness, though not to the level of the last chapter.

The boundaries of your world strain.  
  
Your vision swims. For a moment, you are small, individual. In this moment, you exist in only one body, as opposed to in the multitude of eyes and ears throughout the earth. In this moment, you see only Martin.  
  
There is nothing beyond this. Nothing beyond the clamminess of Martin’s skin, the blueness of his lips, and his broken wheezing. Nothing beyond the searing loss that rips through you. Nothing beyond the unspoken thrumming of _no, no, no._  
  
Then, you are massive again. You are many, and you are looking upon your world with countless eyes.  
  
You see the hairline cracks running through every wall you put up. Through those cracks, you see the Eldest one grin, as much as can be said of such a being. Waiting. Biding its time, ready to seep into your world.  
  
You stir furiously. You open new eyes, new borders. You watch, and watch, and your siblings throw up their walls in response to the immediacy of your need.  
  
But it is too late. Where you had buried Hill Top road deep in the earth, a crack splits it open, and light pours in.

* * *

  
It is not your nature to provide relief or comfort. Perhaps then, it is little surprise that your efforts do little to calm Martin.  
  
You pull him into the Archivist’s body, rocking him back and forth where you both sit on the ground. You feel his hitching breath against the Archivist’s chest and murmur echoes of things humans have told crying loved ones for centuries.  
  
“Be calm.’’ You keep the Archivist’s voice low and soft. “Nothing’s going to happen. Everything’s okay now.’’  
  
Martin doesn’t believe it. You can’t fault him for that. It’s not entirely true, after all.  
  
Martin thinks to pull away, but can only manage a twitch. Somehow, this change scares him all the more. He doesn’t know what brought this sudden mercy on. He doesn’t know what might be lurking behind it, and so his fear burns him anew.

Uncertain of what to do, you press his head into the Archivist’s shoulder, and grant Martin the luxury of sleep.

* * *

  
You decide that taking him back to the cabin or the safe room in the Archives will not work—both places of comfort nonetheless hold bad memories. Better to take Martin somewhere there will be no memories attached, good or bad.  
  
You recreate a room in an old home of Magnus’s, and lay him on the bed there. Lavishly decorated and perfectly adorned with every physical comfort one might need or want. Except, of course, with no doors where Martin may exit or windows where he might look out. Still, you have tasteful curtains draped over where they would be to give the illusion that one need only pull them back to see the sky.  
  
Martin’s curls are plastered to his face with sweat. You have the Archivist brush them back with his fingers and comb through his hair.  
  
You think Martin will feel better with a change of clothes. But when you have the Archivist reach down to remove them, you feel a jolt run through his mind to yours. Martin will panic if he wakes up in new clothes. He’ll feel violated and unsafe.  
  
You don’t want him to feel those things, right now.  
  
How strange it is, to want direct your actions away from causing fear. It makes that pain sear through your being again. But you do not resist it.  
  
You have the Archivist grab a washcloth and wipe the sweat and tears away from Martin’s face, but otherwise you leave him alone.

* * *

  
You don't notice the Archivist's lips moving as he washes Martin's sleeping face, at first.  
  
It doesn't even seem to be entirely intentional on the Archivist's part. There are no words in the Archivist's mind. There are no feelings, either. Only twitches of neurological activity, something that might become such but never reach that point when faced with the vast expanse of knowledge the Archivist contains. Still, his lips move as though to speak.  
  
"I'm sorry,'' is what the shape of his lips form. "Sorry, sorry.''  
  
But air doesn't make it through his vocal chords as he mouths the words, and so their sounds never escape into the air where Martin might hear.  
  
The Archivist’s mind suddenly is preoccupied with the pocket of his coat—the one where the tapes used to be. He finally has a thought—check them, he thinks—but he never manifests the gesture.

* * *

When Martin wakes, he is nearly insensible.  
  
He lies on his side, face turned away from where the Archivist sits at his bedside. You wait for him to speak or move first. Martin scarcely stirs as you watch—not even in this depths of his mind. Your forsaken brother curls in his mind, and he tries to sink away into oblivion.  
  
“Martin.’’ You stand the Archivist up, leaning over so Martin can see his shadow against the wall. “Stay with us.’’  
  
You place a hand on Martin, politely willing your clinging brother away. This rips away his thin layer of forgetfulness. He jumps, high pitched noises escaping his mouth. He feels every eye on him in the room like sharp daggers, and curls into a fetal position.  
  
“It’s alright,’’ you say. “We won’t hurt you right now.’’  
  
Martin doesn’t speak, but his mind finally starts to form words. _Lies, lies—don’t trust comfort, don’t trust it, don’t trust it._  
  
You stand the Archivist there, uncertain. This terror pleases you as much as it hurts. You of the loss of a smile, and the hurt outweighs the pleasure.  
  
 _Leading up to something._ Martin’s thoughts run. _Set up. Make it worse when he finally--_  
  
You place a hand on Martin’s cheek. He feels it like cold hard ice running through his skin where you make contact. His thoughts go dead silent and he jerks away.

He closes his eyes and clutches the blankets, trying to make himself lay like an animal playing dead in front of a predator. He holds every limb tight, willing it not to move, and holds his breath. He wills his heart and mind to be still.  
  
 _If I stop reacting, if I don't give him anything that feeds him,_ Martin thinks, _Surely he’ll get tired and… kill me. Or move on._  
  
You sit the Archivist on his bedside, feeling the jolt in Martin's heart as you do so. He feels the organ thumping in him, and tries to force it down with his thoughts.

_Shut up—deep breaths—calm, calm—he’ll get tired of—calm—stupid—_

"Martin,'' you say. "We won't ever get tired of you.''  
  
You lay a hand on his shoulder again. He hisses in a breath. He wants to pull away, but after everything he knows he can’t actually escape, and you'll delight in any of his resistance.  
  
 _Don't move, don't think, don't be afraid,_ he thinks. _Don't give him the satisfaction._  
  
You move a hand to his hair, and stroke it. He takes in two short, pained breaths, and forces out a long exhale.  
  
 _Stop it. Stop it. Stop feeling. Stop letting him torture you, you stupid--_  
  
"We don't want to torture you,'' you tell him.  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut. You run fingernails across his scalp in the way you know he’s found soothing in the past. His stomach flips, and he lies there tensed up and waiting for the worst.  
  
"We aren't going to do anything to hurt you right now,'' you tell him.  
  
 _The hell you aren’t, you--_  
  
You let that thought pass. You puzzle over him for a moment, wondering what to say to try and coax him into a relaxed state. Even trying to plan how to do such a thing makes you twinge with a hint of wrongness.  
  
"We love you,'' you say. "You don't believe it, of course. You think it's a lie or a trap. Something to lure you into a false sense of security to make the torture so much worse later. This is not an irrational assumption on your part. But you happen to be wrong.''  
  
Martin's thoughts race, but he doesn't deign to respond. Still uncertain, you lay the Archivist beside him on the bed, and wrap arms around him from behind.  
  
His heart rate skyrockets. You keep the hug simple: a gentle, comforting pressure around his body. Then, you bump the Archivist's forehead against the back of his shoulder.  
  
"You think we are trying to hurt you, right now.’’  
  
A hiss. "Aren't you?''  
  
Martin can feel the Archivist's lips pull into a smile, where you have rested his head. You let out a happy hum.  
  
“Thank you for talking to us, Martin.’’  
  
"Just get it over with,'' Martin says, trying to keep his voice flat and failing. "Stop. Messing around.''  
  
"We're not trying to inflict pain on you right now.’’  
  
Disbelief again.  
  
"We do love your pain and your fear,'' you concede. "And we have stirred it in the past. We won’t lie to you about any of that. But that's not the purpose of this.''  
  
 _Then what is--_  
  
"You liked this before. Lying in bed, arms around you. So few people have given you this.''  
  
Hot anger. Martin clenches his fists and considers attempting to pry off the Archivist’s hands. "You mean you want to ruin every single good thing I've ever had.''  
  
"No.'' You consider planting a kiss on his shoulder. But you realize he will hurt, and that makes you twinge again so you don’t. "We want you to feel as you did in those times.''  
  
 _You just said you want pain, that you like it when I'm--_  
  
"Yes,'' you say, cutting off his thoughts. "It’s beautiful when you feel pain. But your happiness and hope are beautiful too. It is... we have never seen beauty in such things, before.’’  
  
Martin’s thoughts pause. He takes this idea and you can feel him putting it away in his head, something to puzzle over and examine later.  
  
“We love you,’’ you tell him again. And then, amending so as to make it sound less discomfiting. “ _I_ love you, Martin.’’  
  
“Then stop all of this,’’ Martin says. "If you want me to be happy, then let Jon go. Give him himself back. Keep him out of this.''  
  
"That won't make you happy,’’ you argue. “You’ll be miserable and lonely without your ‘Jon.’ You were before. You don’t have to try and sacrifice your happiness, Martin.’’  
  
You squeeze him tightly, exactly the level of pressure you know he’s found comforting in the past. It only causes him to hiss again.  
  
“Stop it,’’ Martin says. He does not scream, even though his heart hammers. “Let go of me.’’  
  
“But you like to be held,’’ you insist, nuzzling the Archivist closer.  
  
“I said stop. Why can’t you just--’’  
  
“We aren’t going to do anything,’’ you assure. “We can just lay here like this.’’  
  
Martin finally loses his self control and jerks away, though is unable to escape your grip. “You’re literally doing _something_ right now!’’  
  
“You feel better when you rest in someone’s arms,’’ you whine, still holding him tight. “Be calm. Be with us.’’  
  
Martin grinds his teeth. “I don’t want you to touch me.’’  
  
You flip through all of his wants, and see fantasies of closeness and affection with ‘Jon’ identical to what you have right here with him. “Yes, you do.’’  
  
“I’m asking you to stop,’’ Martin says, tiredly. “Please. Can’t you at least pretend to follow through with your ‘wanting my happiness’ lie?’’  
  
You hold him close for another second. But only that. Then, reluctantly, you draw away. Martin turns his head to look for a moment, face going slack in shock.  
  
He didn’t actually expect you to listen. To be perfectly fair, you didn’t either.  
  
"Sleep,'' you say. "Rest. We can try again when you feel better.''  
  
Martin only feels a slight flash of horror before he passes out.

* * *

  
You sit the Archivist in a chair when Martin sleeps. He collapses into it, limp as a doll.  
  
You don't suppress his thoughts. But right now he is so little without you. He can’t even think of moving his limbs of his own accord. The world’s suffering and the heightened emotion of the night before runs through his head, overwhelming all else so no words of his own can form.  
  
For a second, though, he does move. His hand reaches back up to the pocket where he had put the tapes he had made with the troublemakers ( _Georgie,_ _Melanie,_ _Georgie_ ), as though he has forgotten they are destroyed.  
  
The Archivist does not sleep.

* * *

Martin dreams of running through the corridors from before. He feels phantom hands that stay on his skin, and the burning of his lungs from lack of air.

It shifts. He is instead weighed down by solid stone, forced into place so that he can’t even turn his head. Screaming, raging, only to burst into weak tears.

It shifts again. He is at the Institute, burning from a vision of his mother’s mind forced into his. Burning, burning, burning—but when he looks up this time, he doesn’t see the face he knows as Elias Bouchard, but the grinning face of the one he loves.

There is no place for Martin’s mind to rest.

You watch, and watch, and even as you greedily drink it in a needle-like pain blossoms inside you—as though you are glass, and a hairline crack slowly travels through you, readying you to break into pieces with the right pressure.

Far from where you watch Martin, something starts burning at the webs around the troublemakers' void, and the crack above Hilltop Road’s burial place widens ever so slightly.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: brief non-consensual touching, self harm, and potential coercion/threats. 
> 
> A note on pronouns: someone brought it up to me that Martin refers to the Eye as ''he'' in his own thoughts. This is not because "he" is _correct_ , but because that is how Martin instinctively thinks of a being that is currently interacting with him using Jon (who he knows identifies as a man). In a previous chapter, Jon refers to the Eye as "it" to reflect his own understanding, and I generally use that in the comments because that is what most commenters use. I could say more about my thought process re: gender and the Entities in this fic, but then these notes would become a 5 paragraph essay. 
> 
> Sorry for the long note. Hope you all enjoy the chapter!

When Martin wakes up, you have the Archivist say “I love you.’’  
  
You say ‘I’ in the same way a human might crouch while cooing at a small animal. With this word, you present yourself as smaller than you are, as more individual and personal. Still, when you sit on the edge of the bed, Martin’s fear spikes.  
  
“What are you… what are you going to do?’’ he asks.  
  
“Nothing you don’t want.’’  
  
The pronouncement doesn’t help. Martin’s fear remains, vibrating at the same frequency in his chest. The Archivist frowns.  
  
“You’re worried that we still want sex. That this is all just to get your guard down to make the moment we force it on you later more horrible. But that’s not quite it.’’  
  
“Not ‘quite?’’’ Martin asks, bitingly.  
  
“We-- _I_ would still like to have sex. That is true,’’ you say. “No use in lying about that. But last time was—it was unpleasant. It is better if you participate willingly. That will make for a more pleasant experience for all parties involved.’’  
  
Martin stares. “That’s not going to—Jon doesn’t—how does an eldritch horror even want…?’’  
  
You blink at him, hoping that will break up the discomfiting nature of your stare. The blink travels like a wave, passing among all of the Archivist’s eyes to all of the eyes in the room. Martin clamps his jaw shut.  
  
“I don’t think you even have a concept of what… ‘willing participation’ means. In anything, much less...that.’’  
  
“That’s not true,’’ you say.  
  
“Then let Jon go. Stop controlling him.’’  
  
“It’s not control. I am ‘Jon,’ the Archivist. Jon is us.’’  
  
Martin shakes his head, and turns back over. He squeezes his eyes shut, and clutches the blankets tightly. He doesn’t believe a thing you said, but you see a timid hope flutter inside, hope that you will continue this deception a little longer.  
  
“Martin,’’ you plead.  
  
“I want to go back to sleep.’’  
  
“No. You can’t sleep forever.’’ You tug at his sleeve. “Stay with us.’’  
  
Martin stays there, speechless and un-moving, until you relent, and let him drift into gentler nightmares.

* * *

  
Again, when Martin wakes, you make sure the first thing he hears is “I love you.’’  
  
Martin says nothing.  
  
“Martin,’’ you say. “Come with us. With me. You’ll feel better if you get up.’’  
  
He does not move. He’s figured out you like it when he talks to you, and beyond his one request he doesn’t want to give you the satisfaction. Your agitation expresses itself through the Archivist as pacing.  
  
“There is tea and breakfast. Muffins, made exactly like the ones from that café by the Institute that you used to love. Eating will help you feel better. We want, _I_ want you to feel better.’’ You think for a moment, and then add. “It’s not oolong tea. Just English Breakfast.’’  
  
Martin lies there, trying to will his thoughts and fears still, trying to make himself small and beneath notice as he used to do with his mother. It is as futile as running or fighting was, but he doesn’t know that yet.  
  
“We will wait,’’ you say, “Until you’re ready.’’

* * *

  
The self-harm doesn’t start until you take the Archivist out of the room.  
  
It’s a silly gesture, maybe. Still, you think he might feel better after a moment's privacy, or the illusion of it, at least. Of course, you extend far beyond the Archivist, so you are still with Martin in that room even when the Archivist is not. But the Archivist—his shadow, his footsteps, the adoring smile that lights his face whenever Martin deigns to look at him—engenders deeper panic than your other eyes.

So you take the Archivist out to give Martin a break.

Martin explores the room first—checking behind the curtains to confirm there are no windows, trying the doors, looking in every cupboard and only finding a single pen and his notebook.  
  
 _Nothing, of course there’s nothing. Stupid, why did I think for minute--_  
  
He hits his head against the wall, a wail catching in his throat. Then, he digs fingernails into the skin on his arm. Then, he starts to hit his head on the wall again—and again.  
  
For all your knowledge—of humans, of Martin in particular—you cannot really pinpoint why this escalates. Martin’s thoughts are racing wordlessly, fear and despair and self-hatred all bleeding together like strokes of watercolor. There is no single moment where he decides to hurt himself, until he does it. Then, he keeps doing it.

Perhaps it’s the urge to punish himself, somehow, for the suffering he imagines ‘ _Jon’_ is experiencing. Perhaps it’s just that the intensity of physical pain, at least, is enough to drive everything else from his mind. Either way, his skin tears, and blood starts to drip onto the floor.  
  
“Martin!’’ the Archivist’s voice goes shrill. “Martin, stop!’’  
  
Of course, the Archivist is there the second that you want him there. Martin jerks his head away, too wild for reason but knowing that looking at ‘Jon’ hurts too much. When he turns, he instead meets your gaze on the wall.

You blink at him. He shrieks.

“Don’t look at me!’’ He pounds the wall, unable to catch a single eye before they close, but perfectly capable of bruising his own knuckles against it. “Don’t look at me! Leave me alone!’’  
  
“Stop it. Be calm,’’ the words are yours, now. “Sleep. Rest.’’  
  
Martin falls limp into the Archivist’s arms.

* * *

  
“I love you.’’  
  
Martin notices the Archivist’s voice first, and then the bandages on his arms. He closes his eyes, and wants to sleep again, even knowing it won’t bring escape or even relief.  
  
“I love you,’’ you have the Archivist say again. “I don’t want you to be hurt. I want you to be...’’  
  
It is not entirely true. You still thrill at every wince Martin makes as a new eye opens in the room, even now. You want Martin in all of the ways he can be—hurt and miserable, but also ecstatic and happy. You recall the Martin that existed when he still trusted the Archivist loves him, the Martin who could still smile, and it claws at you from somewhere deep inside. Of all Martin can be, hurt-Martin is the one you want the least, right now.

The conflict this creates in you is too confusing to put into human words, so the Archivist trails off.  
  
You itch to lay hands on Martin again. But the mere thought stings. Because it will make Martin hurt (but you want him hurt) (but you want him to be happy) (but you want-)  
  
“We can, I can take you anywhere in the world. Niagara falls. The pyramids. All the wonders of the world,’’ you tell him. “True, they’re all demolished now, but we can change that. I can recreate them in an instant if you ask me to, just so you have something beautiful to look at for a moment. Just get up and come with me.’’  
  
Martin is, for a human, incredibly stubborn. He gives you nothing.  
  
He knows he cannot hurt you, really. He cannot keep you from this thoughts or his fears, if you want to dig into them. But he can deny you his words, his movements, the reactions of he makes that you love. So now he throws himself into this final battle of attrition.  
  
 _He has to get bored eventually. That’s how they are. Like the train, with that woman who gave up..._  
  
“No,’’ you say, responding to his thoughts in the absence of his words. “We won’t ever get tired of you.’’  
  
You walk the Archivist closer to his bed. His heart freezes at the sound of the footsteps, and his fear rises like a fire you have just stirred. But still he will not deign to allow you a single twitch, if he can prevent it. You ache at this resolve, and a whimper escapes the Archivist’s throat.  
  
(You love his hate, you realize. You love his stubbornness. It hurts you, and you love it in him anyway.)  
  
“If we have to keep you here a thousand years before you adjust, then so be it.’’ Then, you tell him again, “I love you, Martin.”  
  
Perhaps if you say it enough, he’ll begin to understand.

* * *

Martin lays there and lays there, and refuses to speak. You wait for him, occasionally moving the Archivist towards him to lay a hand on his arm, to plead with him to get up, to eat something, to talk _(to l_ _ive)._ Nothing you do reaches him.

But he fails, because you don’t tire of him for a moment. You could watch him breathe, watch him dream, watch nothing but thoughts drifting through his mind for years and not feel the slightest bit of boredom.

Still, you want him to move again. And so you come up with an idea.

"Maybe other people will help you feel better,'' you say, eventually. “Humans do need their friends.’’  
  
Martin’s thoughts immediately jerk to attention. It is immensely gratifying to see.  
  
"Not the troublemakers, of course,'' you say. "We'll keep them where they are, sealed in their wretched void so they can’t do anymore damage. But Basira...''  
  
Martin bolts upright, horrified.  
  
"No.’’  
  
A reaction. A word. You savor it, like a human being in a desert savoring a long awaited drop of water. The Archivist hums in response. "But you like Basira.''  
  
"I—'' — _we never really—but_ _still,_ _she sat there with me after mum—_ "No, I don't. We hardly know each other.''  
  
Martin feels the weight of your many stares.  
  
"She doesn't even like me.'' — _when Peter started to close in, she_ _tried to—_ ''And she can be really mean.''  
  
 _Does he hear my thoughts all of the time? Or just whenever he wants to? If I play it off, can I..._  
  
"We always want to hear what you're thinking,'' you answer.  
  
Martin looks down. When he speaks up, his voice is thin.  
  
"Just leave her out of this.’’  
  
Regardless, you hear a thought stirring in discordance with his words.

 _But_ _Basira’s smart. If she_ _w_ _ere_ _here, maybe together we could plan a way to—_

_No_ _, what am I thinking, she’d just be trapped._

"Basira has been obedient, before. She will be good for you,'' you say, happy at this emerging hope. "We'll bring her.''

"No! Please,'' — _begging hasn't helped before, but I—_ "I don't want her to see me like this.''

You can taste the wretched truth of that pronouncement like a shark tastes blood in the water. An image of Basira’s pitiless face, looking down hard on the choices Martin has made, flashes through Martin’s head. The Archivist smiles. "But you want her around anyway. The thought makes you hopeful.''  
  
"Hopeful that she'll save me from _you_!''  
  
"Yes, exactly.'' The Archivist beams. "Your hope is beautiful too, Martin.’’  
  
Martin tears at his hair.  
  
“You want a friend, and we like to give you what you want.’’ You turn your gaze upon Basira. “She is faltering now, tired from her long journey through a sea of bodies and twisted flesh. She longs for a soft place to rest, though she feels she does not deserve it, and would never ask it of anyone. We can enmesh the border of this realm with where we are, so that when Basira takes her next step--''  
  
"Stop! Stop it!’’  
  
Martin grabs the Archivist by the shoulders roughly, as though to shake him. For a second he’s furious, ready to retaliate. You thrill at the touch, more eyes opening in attention as your delighted hum escapes the Archivist’s throat. Martin winces, immediately losing his nerve. His grip slackens.  
  
A thought flits by: a thought of the pocket where the Archivist used to hold his tapes, and how close Martin’s hands are to it now.  
  
"I'll—if you leave Basira alone, I can—''  
  
Martin leans closer to the Archivist, and it’s as difficult as putting his hand on a stove-top. The thought of offering a kiss runs through his mind, but it makes his stomach turn. You might ask for more, is what he worries. Maybe, he thinks, that is something a being like you would consider “willing participation.’’  
  
 _I can't do it. I can't. Jon wouldn't want—but if Basira gets trapped here_ _too_ _, then—_  
  
Martin's knees shake. You have the Archivist put a hand on his, to which he only shudders a little.  
  
"Martin,'' you say, linking fingers with his. "You don't have to kiss us or… do anything you don’t want to, to save Basira from imprisonment. It wasn’t a threat.’’  
  
''Like hell it wasn't,'' Martin chokes out.  
  
"You don't have to do anything. Promise,'' you tell him. "Just rest.''  
  
You have the Archivist wrap an around around Martin’s shoulder—but the movement is slower than you intend, as though you are moving it through thick mud. Still, you grab Martin a bit more clumsily than you intended, and pulling him to a couch in the corner.  
  
Martin takes a sharp breath, but the freezing panic in his gut quells when you sit the Archivist down beside him at a reasonable distance.  
  
"We want you to be happy in your terror,'' you tell him again. “As much as you can be. Happy, and not in danger of hurting yourself. Human companionship usually decreases suicidal thoughts and self-harm.’’  
  
"Please don't bring Basira here.” Martin’s voice cracks. “I’ll—I won’t self-harm again, okay? If you want me to be happy, then listen to me. Please—''  
  
 _I don't want to fuck over someone else because I was stupid enough to want something._  
  
You feel the Archivist’s face crumple, pityingly. The expression reverberates back into you, and an uncomfortable feeling worms into your core. “It’s not wrong, o-or your fault, for wanting things, Martin.’’  
  
Martin actually barks out a sad laugh. “Please, please just leave Basira alone.’’  
  
"Alright. Alright, we will.’’ A pause. “I won’t let anything happen to Basira.''  
  
Martin lets out a breath. For a moment he is relieved, and you savor that—a sweetly painful loss of fear. You reach for him through the Archivist.

This time, the gesture is choppy and much faster than you intended it. You grab Martin’s hand again, squeezing. He doesn’t resist, this time. It sends a happy thrill through you. You pull his hand towards the Archivist, and...  
  
...and without thinking, you have (the Archivist has?) pressed Martin’s hand up to the breast pocket of his coat, where his lost tapes used to be.  
  
Martin tenses. “What are you—don’t—’’  
  
You freeze, every eye in the room widening. Before you can even realize it, the Archivist has yanked Martin’s hand into his pocket, where it seems something had been sewn in there. There has been some trick pulled on you, some trick using the same material that created the blind spot, creating this inner pocket you could not detect.  
  
Something crinkles. Martin yanks his hand away, but now there is something in his hands—a Polaroid?  
  
It’s the slightest moment of discordance between you and the Archivist. Hardly a twitch. It takes you less than a minute to seize the Archivist again.  
  
It’s not enough time to stop Martin from looking at the hidden message.

* * *

  
**[CLICK]  
  
[WHIRRING]**

**MELANIE**  
  
You want a show? You want some _information_? Think you can web us up in here and terrorize us and then get all of our secrets down on your little tape?  
  
Bet you thought you could! Bet you thought we’d have no way out. Or that we’d have no way of keeping any information without you knowing about it. Fucking voyeur.  
  
Well. You’re wrong. You’re not all powerful, or as all-knowing as you think. But if you _really_ want a snack, here’s something for you!

  
  
**[A MATCH LIGHTS]**

**MELANIE**  
  
Record this, fucker.

  
  
**[THERE IS A ROAR OF FLAME. THEN, THE SOUND OF EXPLOSIONS, AN ENRAGED SCREAM, AND THOUSANDS OF SPIDERS SKITTERING AWAY.]  
  
[CLICK]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...there is actually a version that exists in my head where Beholding isn't as good about listening to what Martin actually says, and gets Basira involved. But that would add like 5 chapters to the fic, and so it will go into the "What if" box along with "the one where Helen gets involved" and "the version with Oliver Banks" and "the one idea I cut because I decided it was Too Much for this fic."
> 
> Maybe if I feel there is enough interest I'll do a set of side chapter/what ifs. Maybe. :'D


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: more light non-consensual touches, ignoring boundaries, and unwanted voyeurism. Also... violence to tape recorders. 
> 
> Sorry this one is late, guys. Each chapter seems more difficult to write than the last. Hopefully posting on a different schedule won't mess up the amount of people that get to see this but... we'll see.
> 
> I'll try to post the next chapter at the usual time. Wish me luck!
> 
> Edit: By the way guys THIS FIC NOW HAS ART!!!! SOMEONE DREW A THING FOR IT, HOLY SHIT!!! Please go behold it over [here](https://scribbleshrimp.tumblr.com/post/641516593781833728/hey-the-fic-apple-of-your-eye-by-fakecrfan-is). Give the artist a compliment or a reblog if you can, because this made my day!

**[CLICK]**

**[TAPE WHIRRING. THERE IS THE SOUND OF A FIRE ROARING SOMEWHERE IN THE DISTANCE, FOOTSTEPS ON BROKEN GLASS, AND THE MOVING OF RUBBLE.]**

**[GEORGIE SPEAKING, MUFFLED AND SLOWLY GETTING MORE DISTINCT.]**

**GEORGIE**

—and they died. They didn’t get better at all, and we couldn’t help them and they _died._ You said it wasn’t my fault. That it’s not the same as killing someone directly, but...

**[MORE CLATTERING, THE CLEARING AWAY OF ASHES AND RUBBLE.]**

**GEORGIE**

—That’s so many people, to leave by the wayside. To leave to die. And we did. And _I_ did. Because I thought, there are others. There are so many, so you can’t wait around, you have to save the ones that—

**[A ROAR OF FLAME, LIKE THERE HAS BEEN A FLARE UP NEAR THE TAPE.]**

—but it—I think—it’s been changing m—

**[MORE FLAME, THE BREAKING OF GLASS. THEN, IT QUIETS DOWN, AND SHE CAN BE HEARD AGAIN, CLOSER]**

**GEORGIE**

I've kept thinking—I have to make it worth it. I have to. Otherwise I let the others die for nothing.

I… I considered sending the two of them away, Melanie. I knew they would draw attention. They both have that Eye on them so hard, much harder than we even knew.

I don’t know if they can be saved, at this point. And even if they can—there are so many other, easier people to help, who deserve it just as much.

We’ve already left so many people by the wayside, Melanie, because we couldn’t help them. Is it… was it selfish of me, to try harder for one single person because I know him? Because we were—friends—once? Was it selfish to risk more for them? I… felt angry about the risk, I think. Irritated that it was so hard. But I _wanted_ to take that risk at the same time, because I cared about him.

[DISTANT] I just didn’t think I was risking you.

**[THERE IS AN OMINOUS RUMBLE, SOME DISTORTION ON THE TAPE.]**

**GEORGIE**

No. No. None of that. I won’t listen.

Melanie—Melanie, come back? If you’re gone, I’m not sure I can stay myse— [FLAT] No, no bargaining. No denial, or anger, or—or any of that.

Death comes for us all. Whatever comes—it will come. And I won’t feel it, I won’t feel it, I won’t—wait.

**[PAUSE]**

**[CAUTIOUS STEPS.]**

**GEORGIE**

Oh. It’s one of you. Um, the Eye, then?

**[MORE STEPS. THE CLEARING OF MORE RUBBLE.]**

Jon said you could love. That you could feel something like it, at least. I didn’t think any of you could feel, or think really. I thought you were like—like machines, or something? Acting without much thinky feely bits inside.

[SOFT, ALMOST GENTLE] Can you feel fear, then? If you feel things?

**[THE TAPE WHIRS, UNCERTAINLY.]**

Do you feel how one day you won't exist anymore? That the things and people you love will vanish, too? Do you think about that, and wriggle away from it like all of the humans do?

I hope you can.

**[THE TAPE WHIRS EXTRA FAST. IT WARPS AND CRACKS, DISTORTING HER VOICE AROUND IT.]**

**GEORGIE**

That’s enough of you, then.

**[INSTEAD OF A CLICK, THE RECORDING ENDS IN A METALLIC SCREECH.]**

* * *

For a heartbeat, Martin believes he is saved.  
  
“Jon.’’ A whisper, followed by a cry of terrible hope. “Jon—?!”  
  
Tearing the Polaroid from Martin’s hands doesn’t erase what he’s seen. Nor does it let you find out yourself. Its message is blotted out to you as much as its existence was before.  
  
You look into Martin’s head, scanning for whatever knowledge he has gleaned from it. But as with his memories of the blind spots, that is blacked out to you as well. A blind spot in Martin’s mind that you can only see the borders of.  
  
 _Jon, it was Jon, Jon did this, Jon Jon Jon_  
  
Martin’s face twists into several different expressions. His hands hover in the air. He tentatively reaches them an inch forward.  
  
“Jon!’’ He doesn’t touch the Archivist. “Jon, I’m sor—talk to me, please—’’  
  
You rip up the Polaroid with the Archivist’s hands. Martin’s face falls, his hands withdrawing and curling back into his chest. But tearing the thing to pieces can’t remove what has been seen.  
Martin's mind wraps around the knowledge, and will not let it go.  
  
Uncertain, you cast him into a deep sleep.

* * *

  
The thing is—when Martin wakes up after that, he gets up and drinks the tea you placed at his bedside. He swallows harshly, throat threatening to close up, but he does it.  
  
“...Jon?”  
  
“Martin. I love you.”  
  
Martin takes a careful breath, and presses his lips into a flat line. “Thanks for being obvious, at least,” he says. “So, you can’t wipe memories, then.”  
  
“Martin...”  
  
“Because you would have, wouldn’t you? And you haven’t, so that means you can’t. That’s one thing you can’t control.” Martin’s eyes dart around the room for a second. “I know there’s a way out. I saw it. I know Jon can leave, and—”  
  
“The Archivist won’t survive, cut off from us.”  
  
Martin’s mouth hangs open for a moment. Then, he closes it.  
  
"You already suspected, the first time you learned how to quit,'' you remind him.  
  
There is a tape on a nearby dresser. Martin jumps when he hears the click, followed by his own voice.  
  
 _''Can you even survive?''_  
  
You do, and don't, love the utter misery on Martin's face at the reminder.  
  
"Without us, he will die.''  
  
 _But he didn't, at—_ Martin's eyes dart around. _Maybe it’s not—_  
  
“You know what I think?” Martin says. “I think you’re full of shit. He didn’t die when he was cut off from you.”  
  
“A slower death isn’t the deliverance you’re hoping for, Martin."  
  
“We could get help. We could take him to a hospital and..."  
  
"And what?" you ask. "Lose all brain function a bit more slowly than otherwise? Draw out the complete loss of memory and motor function to excruciating lengths? Extend that horror for a few measly years before succumbing?”  
  
"Years?"  
  
His tone goes soft, at that. The Archivist frowns, puzzled.  
  
"The Archivist will die without us, at this stage," you repeat. "That is certain."  
  
"How many years, exactly?" Martin demands. "How long will it take for him to die without you?''  
  
"Oh, Martin." You ache at how human this is of him. "Years are not as significant as you imagine. They are less than the blink of an eye against the vast expanse of history—or the vast expanse of what we can now experience together."  
  
Martin grits his teeth. “How. Many?”  
  
You consider denying him. You consider withholding the information entirely, and waiting to see how he might plead or beg or bargain for it. But right now, Martin is alive. Truly alive and feeling, instead of withering away into fog. And you love him so, especially like this.  
  
"The last Archivist who reached this level and quit—well. That was hundreds of years ago,” you say. “It is rare for an Archivist so perfect to come into themselves, and among those even rarer for one to quit. So there is little information on what happens in these cases, even for us.”  
  
Martin's eyes are wide and focused, drinking up your every word. He is so fixated on you it makes you soar.  
  
"He lasted slightly over three years, blinded,'' you explain. "He was well taken care of, for he was a wealthy man with every luxury available for his time and place. But his mind quickly deteriorated. At the end, he died ranting and raving, unable to recognize any of the people he loved.''  
  
Martin stares."But with modern medicine...''  
  
"Maybe the Archivist now could last longer. Maybe not. But it would come to the same, for that is the fate of all minds outside us—brief sparks that flicker away into the cold night. Only we preserve life. Only we save life.  
  
“Martin, that is the difference between what you seek for the Archivist, and what the Archivist has here. A tiny flash of a miserable life, against an immortal existence with all the knowledge and power in the world, where every moment is filled with the purest of our joy.''  
  
Martin looks at the Archivist, hollowly.  
  
"Years,'' he says. "We could have had years.''  
  
“Martin,” the Archivist paces, feeling your agitation. “You do not understand—cannot understand. If you could, you would not want this.”  
  
But Martin does not hear. He thinks only of that moment on the tape. The moment where the Archivist thought to quit, and Martin cut him down for fear of his life.  
  
"Jon, I'm so sorry.''

* * *

  
You expect the worst: more cycles of fighting, then despair, and then shutting himself off from everything. But instead, there is only quiet resolve: Martin pacing in his room, questions and thoughts and quickly discarded plans mixing in his head.  
  
“Walk with me?’’ you lilt the Archivist’s words up at the end, to ensure it sounds like a request and not a demand. “You always used to imagine walks in the park.”  
  
Martin considers for a moment, and then gets up to follow. You have the Archivist smile.  
  
It is a giant dome, closed in so that there is no danger of Martin looking at the sky. The garden is lit instead with bio-luminescent flowers. Martin looks at them for a minute, and then shudders when he sees that they, too, are eyes.  
  
“So,” — _moving on, don’t feel it, don’t feed him—_ “You do sometimes answer questions honestly, it seems,’’ he says.  
  
“We love your questions,” you tell him.  
  
Martin’s thoughts rush. _I can get answers, find things out, find out the limitations—_  
  
Martin’s gait changes, when he is thinking. There is a bounce in his steps, quick and energetic quality to way his head and eyes move with him. He doesn’t notice the Archivist beaming at him fondly, channeling your joy.  
  
You think before you make your next move.  
  
"Martin, I am going to hold your hand now."  
  
Martin’s thoughts freeze, and his hands immediately shoot up so he can stubbornly cross his arms.  
  
"You—"  
  
"I thought I'd warn you. It seems worse for you when there isn't any warning."  
  
Martin squeezes himself, a defensive little self-hug.  
  
"Just holding hands," you tell him, keeping the Archivist's voice slow and reassuring. "I won't do anything else."  
  
"And I don't get a say in it, I suppose.”  
  
You gently touch his upper arm, and follow it to his wrist. He pulls away just an inch and grips his own arm tighter for a second. But then, he thinks through his options and relents.  
  
Warning in advance is a success, it seems. You make a note of this.  
  
You link the Archivist's hands with his. You beam at him, but he refuses to look at the Archivist's face (— _I can't—Jon doesn't deserve—I'm furious, I can't—_ ) so instead you decide to have a flower glow at him, its eyes radiating a soft glow. Martin shuts his eyes, and swallows his anger.  
  
 _It’s fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s—I can deal with it. I can use this. I just have to get him to answer—_  
  
“Not so bad, then?” you ask.  
  
Martin keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. “Let’s just walk.”

* * *

  
Martin barely looks at the fountains you grow before him, in your garden. Instead, his hand twitches in your Archivist’s hand, and he gets straight to his questions.  
  
"Do you need Jon?''  
  
"You're speaking to 'Jon' now,'' you tell him, amused.  
  
He rolls his eyes at you, adorably enough.  
  
"If Jon left through Hill Top road, or stopped being the Archivist, would this horrorshow end?''  
  
No coyness. No hesitation. Martin's eyes glint in the soft light around him. He knows that he has no way to force you to answer, much less answer honestly. But he knows there are answers, and he thinks those answers might help him. The possibility is turning his desperation into steely determination.  
  
You pause, considering.  
  
"You're afraid,'' Martin challenges. "You're not so certain you can stop us from escaping. That's why you don't want to answer.''  
  
"Martin.'' You still love his name on the Archivist's lips. "Manipulating us isn't really possible when we can see the intent in your head.''  
  
Martin juts his chin forward, determinedly.  
  
 _This is a far cry from Peter,_ Martin admits. _But he...people can still be... but you can still be influenced, even if you know it's happening._  
  
It takes you a moment to realize he is addressing you in his own thoughts, accounting for your presence in them. The many-eyed flowers glow brighter, new blooms sprouting on them. Martin shrinks back. He tugs his hand away for a moment, but you hold it tight, and so he gives up.  
  
You rub the Archivist’s thumb in gentle circles against the skin of his wrist. Martin squirms, but does not pull away again. You mark this as another success.  
  
"If you must know,'' you say, "No. Removing the Archivist—this current Archivist, ‘Jon’—will not collapse our world. Instead, the position will simply fall to the next most appropriate person—and there are quite a few in this world, budding Eyes ready to drink in more, once they grow.''  
  
“So, you wouldn’t die.” Martin says. “You wouldn’t even be inconvenienced.”  
  
“Not in the way you re thinking, no.”  
  
“Let him go,” Martin asks, keeping his voice level. “You keep saying you love me, and that you want to give me what I want. I want Jon out of this. I want him to be free to make his own decisions, uninhibited by you.”’  
  
“It’s not inhibition.” Your indignation makes the Archivist’s tone petulant, almost whining. “You’re not conceptualizing it in the right way.”  
  
Martin blinks tiredly. “I don’t care. Just let him go.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Martin didn’t, and doesn’t, expect anything to come of his request, so there is no disappointment. “You’ll lose nothing.”  
  
“I’ll lose you.”  
  
This actually makes Martin start, surprised. He stares at the Archivist, confused.  
  
You try to explain. “We won’t be able to experience you without a human vessel—with all the senses, and talking to you as we do so.”  
  
“So can you pick another one.”  
  
“You won’t look at us the same way, in another vessel.” But no, that’s not entirely it. You hiss at the difficulty of putting these contradictions into words. “You won’t look at us and have it bloom in you. Love.”  
  
Martin’s jaw hardens, and his hand twitches in yours again. “I already don’t love you. Wearing Jon like a-a Nikola suit doesn’t change that.”  
  
You tilt the Archivist’s head at him, and feel everything go soft in you.  
  
“I know,” you say. “It doesn’t matter. I love you, Martin.’’  
  
You bring his hand up to the Archivist's lips. Martin twitches again, hand instinctively jerking away before he stops himself. You press a kiss to his hand, and Martin lets out a sigh.

You count this as another success.

* * *

Martin stops looking at the Archivist, whenever he can.

It isn't like when he stayed in bed and tried to make himself dead to the world. He eats and drinks when you prompt him, the possibility of Basira being "threatened" again ever in his mind. He even speaks to you, still asking question after question, occasionally writing things down in his notebook so he can keep track of what he knows. But through all of it, he keeps turning his head away from the Archivist, focusing on eyes in the wall instead, even shutting his eyes when you force the Archivist into his view.

 _If it's something you get out of me when I look at him,_ he thinks at you, _Then I won't give you the satisfaction._

"Martin," you complain. "Martin this is ridiculous. Stop it."

You poke him, trying to get his attention. His heart races even at such a tiny gesture. He thinks of all the ways you might react even to this one denial. Violence, maybe. Encasing him in stone like before, so he's forced to look in a certain direction. Prying his eyelids open. But even with these fears, he keeps turning away, putting his eyes on his book.

"T-tell me about how-about the tunnels." — _keep distracting, keep asking, keep finding things out—_ "How much of them can you see into?"

Your indignation comes out as a whine from the Archivist. But he is less fearful, when you stop. So you withdraw the Archivist to another seat in the room and start to answer his question.

Martin fixes his eye on the wall, and doesn't look at the Archivist once throughout the explanation.

* * *

  
The question that brings it all down comes over a dinner table you laid out for him of his favorite foods, in between a few half-hearted bites.  
  
"So," Martin starts his first question, still looking down at the eyes blinking in and out of the table instead of at the Archivist. "You keep calling yourself 'we.’ What’s that about?”  
  
You take a moment. And then longer. It is not something you thought through, when you started to use the Archivist's words to talk to Martin. You search the expanse of your memory and thoughts throughout existence  
  
"What's wrong?" Martin grouses. "Are you going to tell me you don't know? Because that would be just hilarious."  
  
"Because we are many," you say.  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
"It means, hmrgh." There is a bit of a twinge, upon considering yourself. "You think of 'the Eye' as a singular presence. A giant alien brain in space, somewhere, outside of all reality but inserting itself into it."  
  
"I..." Martin frowns. "Okay, yeah. That's not what you are, then?''  
  
"We arise from many consciousnesses," you say. "Many different brains, people, throughout existence."  
  
"Many avatars, you mean."  
  
"Yes. But non 'avatars' as well. The powerless woman who keeps checking her apartment every day for hidden cameras—she is part of us too. The little boy who sticks his nose in all the places he shouldn't—he is us, as well, even before anything you call supernatural has touched him."  
  
Again, there is a rush at seeing Martin look directly at you, so carefully considering what you say.  
  
"And," you say, thinking. "And because, there are many eyes experiencing, watching through the Archivist, and have been all along."  
  
"What does that mean? Like... other people, looking at what's happening through Jon's head?"  
  
"More or less."  
  
"Other... other avatars?'' Martin asks. And then, he shrivels back. " _Elias?_ Wait, how much has Elias been--has he--has he seen...?"  
  
"The one you call Elias, Jonah Magnus, has been watching, yes. For he is also us."  
  
Martin swallows. Then, he puts a hand over his mouth, feeling sick.  
  
"When I… Elias was—he—"  
  
"Magnus is us, too,” you reassure him. “Of course he loves you, and has been with us in these moments."  
  
Martin's stomach churns.  
  
"I need a moment."

* * *

  
There isn't any place Martin can "have a moment" in the way he wants.  
  
He gets up from the table to make a run for it, and a quick sweep of the room reminds him there are no doors, only walls with eyes.  
  
"Let me," Martin starts, only to realize it's no use. He's started to internalize the immensity of your presence threading through this world. If you were to let him run to a bathroom, or his bed, you would be there as well. You are everywhere, in this world. There is no place he can be alone.  
  
So he freezes where he is, one realization hitting him after another.  
  
Elias, watching the Archivist's hands assault him.  
  
Elias, laughing at Martin’s undignified shrieks.  
  
Elias, not just seeing it but experiencing it in all the ways you do, feeling how Martin's bare skin feels, how he shrinks away.  
  
Elias, ( _worse, worse, worse_ ) there in the moments that Martin had thought safe before—during the chaste hugs or the reassuring holding of hands on the way out of the Lonely.  
  
“Stop,” Martin pleads. “I get it. I get it. Stop putting it in my head.”  
  
“We aren’t.”  
  
Martin puts a hand to his mouth. His eyes are darting around the room, again looking for a place to rest where you don't meet his gaze from the cracks in the wall. He breathes in, and it makes a pitiful wheezing noise.  
  
"Martin," the Archivist's face falls. "Oh, Martin. I’m so, I-I-"  
  
Martin actually slaps his hands away when he reaches out. Not enough to hurt, but enough to be a warning. "Don't.''  
  
The Archivist closes his mouth, and waits.  
  
Martin doesn't vomit. Instead, he closes his eyes and sucks in a deep breath, and holds it. After a few deep breaths, his thoughts solidify.  
  
“So you don’t actually need Jon to ‘experience’ me, then,” Martin says.  
  
“What… what do you—?”  
  
You look into Martin’s mind, and see the idea that has formed there. A single, succinct compromise that would resolve Martin’s most pressing issues with the situation.  
  
“No,” you say. “Martin that’s not—that’s not what you want. That won’t make you happy.”  
  
Martin opens his eyes wearily. “I’m already unhappy.”  
  
 _And since I’m going to be unhappy either way, I’d rather Jon be free._  
  
“No. It won’t be the same. It won’t be like—you won’t smile.” It is so hard to put into words. “We don’t—I want it to go back.”  
  
“Nothing ever goes back.” Martin blinks slowly, voice aching. “It’s already too late for that. Just let me have this one thing—please.”  
  
You stare him down. And then finally (not conceding, not yet) you hold out a hand.  
  
“Come, then," you say, "Let me show you what you're asking for."  
  
Martin takes your hand.

* * *

  
From the still-burning fire where you had encased the void in emerges a shadow.

You infer it is one of the voices on the tape, the assistant who quit, but you cannot make her out. She is indistinct to you, features blotted out and even her silhouette constantly threatening to slip out of your perception.

“Come on!” she calls. “Georgie! You better not have been blown up, or—Georgie!”

You know she cannot see, and yet she is the one that strides forward, leading confidently and holding a hand behind.

The answer that comes is even further beyond your perception than the shadowy ex-assistant. But you can just barely make it out—the voice from the tapes, but now you can hear the fatality that rings through its deceptively soft tone. It reeks so strongly of death that the very air in your world flinches away from it.

“Melanie.”

“I’m here.” The ex-assistant says. “Now get up.”

And then, rather than another figure emerging from the void, the void itself moves to follow her.

You realize, then, that it is not a house that is the blind spot. It is not an artifact, or a place, or any other object concealing the voice you heard on tape. If only it were; those things stay in place.

You throw up new borders. Eyes, mazes, walls, entire oceans—anything you can throw at them to slow its progress or trap them entirely. But most importantly, you put everything you can between them and where Martin now takes the Archivist’s hand.

It is a long walk to the Panopticon, after all. And you will not have death meet Martin halfway.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: non-consensual light touching, manipulation, canon-typical re-traumatization. 
> 
> **Also,** a human being who does not use it/its pronouns is referred to by those in this chapter. So, misgendering, but less of the invalidating gender variety and more the invalidating/misunderstanding humanity kind. 
> 
> On another note!!! Someone wrote a spin off fic, holy shit! holy shit!!!!!! [Here it is!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29207730/chapters/71714811) Please go love bomb this author with me if you can. 
> 
> Also, just so you know, I welcome any sort of fic/art in this universe or with this general idea. No need to ask my permission, but also... I _Would_ like if you tell me if you write/draw a thing, so I can go glue my grubby eyeballs to it.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter!

What has entered your world is a true abomination. Not chosen or favored like the Archivist, but a mutation; an aberrant glitch springing from the Eldest one.

And yet it walks and it brings with it the stench of death.

You don’t see how it and the shadowy ex-assistant get through all of your barriers. Only that they slip out of your view for a moment, and the next they are freed. Finally, you send minions, ancient archivists who have naught left in them but eyes to slow its path.

It opens its mouth, and for a moment you hear it clearly. “The moment you die—”

And they fall listless where they stood. You recoil, sending ripples through the air and ground, folding the landscape back upon itself to shove the two of them away.

It is no use. It advances, regardless, and death enters your world.

* * *

You allow Martin to walk underneath the open sky for a time. Then, smelling death in the distance, you encase all of London in a protective dome. Martin stops, and watches an eyeful lattice crawl its way over the sky.  
  
“What’s that about?” Martin asks. “I wasn’t going to—I know that you won’t let Jon go if I get razed to the ground.”  
  
You knew that already. The Archivist knew that already too, and you can feel his pulse quicken for a moment. But Martin quickly moves on.  
  
“If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you just—” He swallows. “You can’t—I mean, you aren’t—?”  
  
 _You’re not just teleporting us there._  
  
Martin regrets the question, but it’s already slipped out. You stop the Archivist, pausing for a moment. It did not even occur to you to “teleport” before, but immediately you know you can't.  
  
“Really?” Martin asks, testy at the silence. “You don’t just automatically know? Or did you even plan to take me there?”  
  
You struggle. “It takes time,” you say. “It is a journey to realize the implications of a choice, and to commit to it anyway. Also, it gives us time to make sure Magnus is… presentable.”  
  
Martin squints. “Why? What’s… wrong with El-Jonah?”  
  
Elsewhere, you continue to tweak the neurons of Magnus’s brain to ensure that he will be able to process thoughts into verbal statements Martin will find comprehensible. “Nothing,” you say. “Magnus is fine.”  
  
“Sure. Great. Cool.” Martin decides to let this go. “Okay, in plain language then—how long should this take?”  
  
“However long it takes for you to stop hoping someone will sweep in and prevent you from making this choice.”  
  
Martin swallows. “Right. Right, then.”  
  
He takes a step ahead. Behind, the Archivist’s head turns away from the path, towards the smell of death wafting in the distance. He staggers toward it, unbalanced. For a second, he nearly veers off the path, but then you re-balance him, and focus him ahead.

* * *

The first stop Martin takes he sits down on a nearby rock. It’s not to rest from physical tiredness, but an attempt to rest from the cold, creeping dread crawling through his spine.  
  
"Why me?" he asks, eyes fixed on the ground. "There must be other people you...got obsessed with torturing."  
  
 _Might as well ask now._ He thinks. _It'll be better than hearing the answer from Elias._  
  
You tilt the Archivist's head.  
  
"You are beautiful in ways you can’t understand,” you tell him. “But I will try. You feel so strongly, so vibrantly. You are deeply imaginative; every possible pain you anticipate is as strong as though it were actually inflicted. "If I were to call human minds ‘lights,’ you would be the sun. If I were to call fear blue, you would be the brightest shade of the sky.”  
  
"So you love torturing me. Big shock. But you can do that to anyone.”  
  
"Yes. We do. We—I have. But I don't have to," you say. "I know you, Martin. You are evolved and conditioned to torture yourself. All we had to do was nudge, and then watch you go."  
  
Martin doesn’t say anything to that.  
  
"It's more than that now, though,” you explain. “I love your hope and love, your pettiness and anger. I love—” oh, it hurts a little now, thinking of it all. “I love how in the midst of your fear, you still find ways to smile."  
  
Martin still will not look at the Archivist’s face. It is easier, he finds, to separate the Archivist from you when he dissects the Archivist into pieces: a voice that speaks higher and fonder than 'Jon's', disembodied hands that reach out at the edge of Martin’s vision.  
  
“I’m not smiling now,” he says.  
  
“No." It gnaws at you. "You aren’t.”  
  
Martin gets up, and walks forward. You have the Archivist follow, knees locking up as you try to move him.  
  
"There are other humans with hope and love and imagination," Martin points out, wryly. "Other people who torture themselves in their heads."  
  
“And I enjoy them. But I don’t _love_ them. I love you.”  
  
“Hm. Right.”  
  
You sense his doubt, and stop to cross the Archivist's arms. "There are other bitter, witty academics with graying hair, yet you fell for this one specifically. Why? Is your love less real because you hypothetically could have fallen for someone else?"  
  
Martin juts his head more forward, trying to hide the way his lip wobbles at that. It’s no use of course. You can always see it.  
  
"I love you, Martin," you say. "You're the first and only one we have loved like this. It doesn't have to be a punishment," you say. "You can live happily with us.”  
  
Martin only keeps walking.

* * *

The next stop is an open door frame. Not one of your twisting sibling’s, but one of heavy wood and intricately engraved patterns: a door frame Martin can easily recognize from the Archives.  
  
“What’s this about?” Martin asks, tiredly.  
  
But he knows. Through the doorway he sees the bare sketches of a memory exposed under your watchful sky. The desk. The waste bin full of ashes. The rickety chair that refused to sit solidly even when Martin had put a napkin under its shortest leg. The lighter Martin had used to burn the statements, fallen on the floor forgotten.  
  
"This isn't—This isn't funny," Martin snaps. "What are you—?"  
  
Martin doesn’t finish, because when he looks down at the chair he’s back in the moment of Magnus’s punishment. Specifically, to how Magnus had touched him.  
  
First, both hands on his shoulders, pressing on Martin to stop him from collapsing in on himself. Then, one of those hands moved to Martin’s face, stroking his skin there lightly before turning his head up.  
  
Martin had not actually seen into Magnus’s eyes. His vision was blurred by the sparkling white dots of sensory and emotional overload. But Magnus had been looking deep into his eyes, savoring his pain through touch and sight and sound.  
  
Martin grip the chair to support himself.  
  
"I thought it—" Martin says. "I thought maybe I had imagined that part. The touching. It didn’t seem real.''  
  
"It was."'  
  
Martin's memories of the incident were fractured. Not forgotten, not repressed, but only recalled in pieces. The carvings on the doorframe, when his vision had cleared enough to look up and see Magnus leaving. The way the chair had ricketed back and forth. The smell of ashes in the dustbin. The detail of Magnus’s touch always slipped in and out, vanishing before Martin could dwell on it.  
  
Martin grips the chair harder.  
  
"So," he says. "This is intimidation. A threat."  
  
"No. It was just on your mind," you say. "A reminder. The reasons you find it so difficult to continue."  
  
Martin, again, rolls his eyes at you.  
  
"Yes, of course I'm terrified of Elias. Congratulations. What a—revelation about myself! I had no idea before."  
  
"Martin," the Archivist says. "You don't have to...i-if you want to go back..."  
  
"Shut up. No. That's not how this works," Martin takes a breath. "I'm terrified and I'm going anyway. That's it. That's all. Fear won’t stop me."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Instead of answering, Martin continues his trek.

* * *

Martin doesn’t stop again until he sees the cabin in between himself and the tower.  
  
"Oh fuck off. Really?"  
  
“It was on your mind,” you tell him, honestly.  
  
“Right, of course,” Martin snipes. “Certainly has nothing to do with you trying to purposefully derail me.”  
  
Still, Martin enters rather than going around.  
  
All is as they left it. The same floorboards creak as Martin steps on them, the same blankets are thrown haphazardly over the couch, the same mugs are cleaned and turned over to dry by the sink. Martin walks through, numbly regarding every detail like someone walking through a museum.  
  
It’s the smell of burnt french toast ( _first breakfast Jon made_ ) that makes Martin burst into tears.  
  
“Martin,” you tell him, reaching out. “I’m going to hug—’’  
  
“Don’t,” Martin spits. “Don’t you dare.”  
  
You let the Archivist's hands drop, waiting. Instead Martin hugs himself, sniffling pitifully.  
  
“We can stay here,” you say. “I know this is what you want.”  
  
“No,” Martin says.  
  
“You want to live in a cottage with the Archivist,” you say, narrating the painful flashes you see in him. “You long to wake up every day next to the one you love, to sit beside him quietly reading, to cook together or surprise each other with meals made with love. You want—”  
  
“Okay! Okay I want that,” Martin's voice breaks. “I want it. Of course I want it."  
  
"Then..."  
  
"But this isn't it! You think it is, but it's just a, a twisted imitation. A lie."  
  
He wipes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. "Jon never loved me. Jon never would have even liked me as a person if it had been entirely up to him."  
  
“That, that’s not…”  
  
"You can't dangle what I want in front of me like some carrot," Martin says, "Because you are—are incapable of giving it to me. You can't even understand, or you'd realize this isn't it."  
  
You struggle with this for a moment, running it through all of the knowledge you have and looking for some new insight to navigate this. You find nothing.  
  
"Are you really sure you don't want to stay here?"  
  
Martin storms forward and opens the cupboard. There is whiskey in there, he knows. Left over from the hunter, nearly untouched by him and Jon. He brings it out and opens it, but doesn't make to drink any.  
  
"The lighter," he says. "Give it to me."  
  
"Martin..."  
  
"You said that this 'journey' is about my own doubts. Bullshit," Martin says simply, voice cutting clean through his tears. "You never cared about Jon's doubts or reservations along the way, or anyone else's. My own decisions don't actually matter. What matters are yours. You’re the one waffling here, not me."  
  
"That’s…” this turns you to think about yourself, which makes you hiss out of the Archivist’s mouth, discontented. “That’s not… untrue.”  
  
"So when I say, if you're going to keep me no matter what, I'd prefer to stay with Elias and let Jon go to Hill Top Road, will you actually listen?" Martin challenges. "Will you actually make an effort to do a single thing I ask? Or will you keep stalling and trying to derail me while pretending to care about my feelings?''  
  
You try to move the Archivist's lips, but they feel thick and numb. Failing that, you take the lighter out of his pocket, and hand it to Martin.  
  
Martin pours the whiskey over the couch, and shortly after watches his dream of comfort go up in flames.

* * *

It is only a short way to the Panopticon, after that. As Martin approaches, his head stays low, eyes on the road ahead of him.  
  
He has one more question before he goes.  
  
"Did anyone love me?''  
  
"I love you," you tell him. "The Archivist loves you."  
  
Martin shakes his head. "In the human way, I mean."  
  
"That's an oversimplification. Our love is as human as it is not. Drawing distinctions doesn't make any—"  
  
"Stop. Just answer.”  
  
"It isn't a fair question," you whine. "You say 'did anyone love me' but you think 'am I lovable, as a person?' and 'is there something wrong with me?' And simply answering the surface level will imply answers to..."  
  
"So. No one, then.”  
  
How can such a pronouncement hurt you?  
  
You search your extensive collection of knowledge regarding Martin: every memory he has, every memory others have of him, every cherished moment you caught him on security cameras.  
  
“It’s not that you are unlovable,” you say. “Or that you put people off, or that you did anything ‘wrong’ from some kind of moral standpoint.”  
  
Martin’s lips are already pursing miserably, eyes glistening.  
  
“Many people found you charming, attractive, sweet—but when they reached out with kindness or interest…”  
  
“I... pulled away from them,” Martin finishes. “I was, I was afraid.”  
  
“When the assistant Tim started to invite you out, you had a recurring nightmare that he was setting you up for a massive ‘Carrie-style’ humiliation,” you recall, your smile curling guiltily up the Archivist’s lips. “When your library supervisor gave you a gift—”  
  
“I get it.” Martin snaps. “No need to rehash the greatest hits.”  
  
He wraps arms around himself again.  
  
“It’s not your fault," you say, because that seems to be the thing to say.  
  
“Like that matters. I’m—no one loves me now, no one will miss me o-or…”  
  
“ _I_ love you. Now, I’m going to...” you trail off, rethinking your wording before holding out the Archivist’s arms. “Would you like a—?’’  
  
“No.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Don’t,” Martin says, squeezes himself tighter. “I don’t want you doing--doing _anything_ with Jon. Hear me?”  
  
You tilt the Archivist’s head, and frown. Then, having an idea, you mold a nearby lamppost into a scarecrow-like figure with outstretched arms. Martin jumps, and hisses in surprise.  
  
“What—?!”  
  
“Is this better?" you ask.  
  
Martin stares at the stuffed, headless thing with eyes blinking in and out of its arms for a second. Then, he laughs. Shrieking, sobbing laughs that wrack through his frame.  
  
“That’s... that’s not,” he gasps. “That’s, you’re—you complete _idiot._ ”  
  
You are about to withdraw the figure, but then he practically throws himself on it. He holds it tightly, burying his forehead where its head should be, and sobs. It’s cold, it’s creepy, it squeezes back just a little too tight, but none of that matters now. Martin just needs something to hold.  
  
But something curls in you, watching this; something sweet and stinging and sickly warm. For now, it is enough.

* * *

A curiosity: the Archivist’s heart races at the foot of the Panopticon.  
  
His eyes dart about, looking for shadows or cracks along the lattice around London. His legs seize up, and he threatens to fall over.  
  
Martin knocks on the reflective obsidian of the tower, and it opens to a doorway.  
  
Another curiosity: you know how these knocks sound both to Martin, and to the Archivist. To the Archivist they are far louder, loud as bell tolls, blaring out all other noises.  
  
Magnus, of course, is already waiting on the other side.  
  
“Always so polite,” he drawls. “I always did like that about you, Martin.”  
  
“I—”  
  
Martin is cut off by Magnus cupping Martin’s cheeks and kissing him on the forehead. A violent shudder runs through Martin’s body. He curls in on himself a bit, hunching, but does not flinch away.  
  
“Lovely, as always.” Magnus grins. “Do come in, Martin. Shame Jon won’t be joining us, of course. Imagine the fun we could have with you between the two of us.”  
  
Martin freezes up. “Don’t—Jon isn’t…”  
  
“Come,” you and Magnus say. “Or are you getting cold feet?”  
  
Martin takes a first step up the tower, and finds the Archivist’s hand on his shoulder. He flinches.  
  
"Stop that," Martin says.  
  
The Archivist grips harder instead. Martin attempts to shrug him off, stomach bottoming out.  
  
“You said—” Martin swallows. “I thought you were going to let him go.”  
  
Magnus answers for you. “We are.”  
  
You try to remove the Archivist’s hand. It stays. Tugs Martin back, even. His eyes circle wildly, looking again for shadows (shadows, blind spots, the eerily hopeful smell of death) but there are none.  
  
Martin trembles for a second, uncertain at being caged in between them (you). Then, his shoulders drop. The uncertainty disappears, replaced by realization.  
  
“Let go, Jon.”  
  
And then, as though burned, the Archivist does.  
  
Martin does not look back at the Archivist, before the tower closes. It is for the best. The look on his Archivist's face would have hurt him.  
  
“Goodbye,” is all he says. "I'm—goodbye, Jon."  
  
The tower closes behind them. The Archivist is left outside, alone. At that, all of the churning inside him flatlines, as surely as if he’d passed out. There are no more half formed hopes in him, no images of shadows or cracks or blind spots.  
  
There is nothing in him as you walk him away from the tower, nothing in him as you walk him to Hill Top Road.  
  
It hurts to push him through the chasm there. It makes cracks run through the lattice around London. But you have gotten used to doing what hurts, these days.  
  
For a moment, you see a red door through the Archivist's eyes. Then, nothing.

* * *

* * *

**[CLICK]** ****

**JON**

I’m not. Going.

[LAUGH] That’s the thing. That’s what Melanie said. You have to walk through the door yourself, of your own volition. You have to choose it.

Well, I’m here. I’m in this—house. I can tell it’s like the… the other places. I can feel that the Eye is cut off. I can feel myself slipping. Can’t go back out, or I’ll lose myself again. But if I go forward, Martin will still be...

[DEEP BREATH] I see… I see the way out. The way to the other world. But I won’t take it. I can figure out something, some way to… to save...

I won’t leave—I won’t leave another person behind.

I can’t.

  
  
**[CLICK]**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now MORE art (?!?!?) specifically of the lamppost scene. Riiiiiiight over [here.](https://scribbleshrimp.tumblr.com/post/642523080477032448/fakecrfan-okay-its-only-a-day-late-this-time) Go check it out!


	13. THE LIFE YOU SAVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: story typical non-consensual touching, manipulation, suffocation, torture, further offscreen unpleasantness of an ambiguous nature, Jonah Magnus, violence to tape recorders, and... I think that's it. 
> 
> Someone did AMAZING art of the garden scene from a few chapters ago! Go check it out [here.](https://pensivetense.tumblr.com/post/642688179504316416/id-lose-you-fakecrfans-fic-ate-my-brain) Give the artists some likes/reblogs/comments if you can, because xe made my day with this!
> 
> Also, yes. This will now have 15 chapters. (deep sigh) I thought this was gonna be a short fic...
> 
> Also, special thanks to Starshower for looking over this chapter when I was fumbling and helping me edit! I haven't had a beta for any previous chapters, so I'm especially grateful. Thank you ♥

Magnus, in particular, had always found Martin to have a pretty face.

In the walls of your tower, he absently wonders how that pretty face would look if he had no air. The moment that curiosity stirs, you twitch unthinkingly into action.

Martin struggles and thrashes at first. He throws everything he can get his hands on, beats his fists against Magnus—all useless. Then, he falls to the floor, writhing, spitting, eyes fluttering helplessly and lips turning purple.

Martin crawls to Magnus. Grabs at his leg, angrily at first and then pleadingly. He tugs and looks up at Magnus with tearful eyes, begging soundlessly.

_please no no no no more, air, need air_

“Dear, sweet Martin.” Magnus says, fondly stroking Martin’s hair. “So quickly, when you wouldn’t deign to touch Jon? I’m flattered.”

Martin punches Magnus one more time. It lands weakly, and instead Martin flails and has to support himself there, clinging to Magnus’s legs. Magnus chuckles, lovingly bemused at seeing the sweet humiliation of this position wring through Martin’s thoughts.

“No need for that, love," Magnus says. “You’ll only tire yourself out.”

Magnus takes Martin by the hair and pulls him higher. Martin would scream in panic if he were not so effectively muted.

For all Martin's racing thoughts, there is nothing in Magnus's mind or in his eyes that Martin expects. There is no vengeance, no hatred, not even the desire to take further physical advantage yet. There is only rapt fascination and fondness at Martin's pain, and how beautiful he is under it. And then also, a sudden paradoxical fussiness when Magnus realizes Martin's neck is getting sore.

Martin is precious, and so Magnus feels he must be a gentleman to Martin—a gentleman after Magnus’s own style, at least. And so as Martin is limp from suffocation, Magnus arranges him to rest comfortably, so there is none of that unfortunate soreness in his neck. Martin spasms.

“There you go. Much better, hm?” Magnus says. “Relax now.”

He makes no move to let Martin breathe again. Instead he scratches Martin’s scalp, exactly where you used to lovingly have the Archivist caress him. It wrings out a stream of hot tears.

(You love Martin’s tears, but—)

That splitting ache that has wormed its way inside you since you realized Martin might never smile again—it sears you now. The paradoxical hurt runs through Magnus like hot lava through his veins. He shudders at the intensity of it, but not for a second does stopping ever come to mind. He is lost cataloging the texture of Martin’s hair, the convulsions of his throat as he tries to scream without drawing air. Your pain at seeing Martin like this only loops back into more agonized joy.

Like a nerve pressed so that it cannot help but spasm, you watch, and watch, and watch. 

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**MELANIE**

Absolutely not.

**GEORGIE**

(GENTLE) It's just how it is, sometimes. We’ve already left so many people behind.

**MELANIE**

You didn't abandon _me._

Don't tell me it was because I was easy to help. I screamed at you over the phone, banged on your door in the middle of the night...

**GEORGIE**

It was a different world, though. There was more time. More help to go around.

But now we're in the apocalypse. So—

**MELANIE**

No. I won't.

**[TRUDGING FORWARD.]**

**GEORGIE**

I'm slowing down, Melanie.

**MELANIE**

Not listening!

**GEORGIE**

It's harder to move. Harder to want to. Eventually, I'm sure I'll become like Alex. I'll just sit down, unfeeling, and wait—

**MELANIE**

I don't care! I don't care what happens with you. I'm not. Going. To leave you.

**GEORGIE**

(QUIET) It won't save me if you die too.

**MELANIE**

(ACIDLY) Then you better factor that into your calculations if you plan to sit down and die.

**[SHE STOMPS FORWARD FOR A MOMENT. THEN STOPS.]**

Oh, for fuck's sake—

**[SOUND OF TAPE RECORDER BEING PUNTED.]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[PAPERS RUSTLING, CUPBOARD DOORS OPENING, AND SLAMMING SHUT.]**

**JON**

There has to be something—

**[OBJECTS CLATTERING TO THE FLOOR.]**

Something that could block out the Eye. Come on, think. _Think._

Georgie can. But she isn’t here.

Whatever the thing that was protecting Salesa. A… camera? If I had that, I could walk right up to the Panopticon, and—

(BITTER LAUGHTER)

But I don't. Have it. And I certainly can't go back and get it! Should have thought of that at the time. Could have at least asked, figured out some plan. But no, it didn't seem important.

(SELF-MOCKING) Sure, the Eye is torturing everyone in the world, but it’s not hurting _me_ . I suppose it’s altering my thoughts just a tad, but certainly that’s just _fine_.

I should have—

**[PHONE RINGING]**

**[JON SCRAMBLES, DIGGING THROUGH CUPBOARDS. THE RINGING GETS CLEARER, AND JON ANSWERS WITH A** **_BEEP._ ** **]**

**JON**

Who is…?

**MARTIN**

Jon?

**[JON’S BREATH CATCHES.]**

**MARTIN**

Can you hear me? Jon? Jon?

...Please say something. Please.

**JON**

H-here?

**MARTIN**

(RELIEF) Jon. I...

Listen to me. You have to go through the door.

**JON**

I—(STALLING) Sorry, how are you making this call? DId you escape? Is there something…?

**MARTIN**

No. No, I’m not pulling one over on the Eye, Jon. (SIGH) I just asked? Asked to talk to you.

Annabelle arranged the call, though. Jona—the—my um, unfortunate admirer can’t actually reach in here. But she has wires everywhere. She was... (UGH) Smug about it.

**JON**

They really just let you call?

**MARTIN**

More or less. Look—I—can you tell me what’s wrong? Why haven’t you gone through the door, yet?

**[PAUSE]**

Maybe you can't remember, but the door is the way out. The red door, like in the picture Georgie and Melanie…

**JON**

I remember _just_ fine, thank you. No need to talk to me like I’m your goddamn mother after the dementia kicked in.

(INSTANT REGRET) Shit.

**MARTIN**

Okay. (QUIET) I just wanted to—

**[LINE DISCONNECTS. DIAL TONE PLAYS.]**

**JON**

No, no, no, no, _no._ That’s not what I—Martin!

**[DIAL TONE CONTINUES]**

**[JON THROWS THE PHONE ON THE FLOOR.]**

**JON**

Stupid, stupid, _stupid._

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[DEEP BREATH]**

**JON**

Okay. The memory loss and disorientation is going to set in, so I’ve taped notes… everywhere. I’m making every kind of record I can. Lots of reminders to not go outside until I have formed a plan.

Hopefully Georgie and Melanie will show up. If not, then I don’t know if I can…

I don’t know what I’ll do.

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[PHONE RINGING]**

**[JON ANSWERS WITH A** **_BEEP_ ** **.]**

**JON**

Martin?

**MARTIN**

(SUBDUED) Jon.

**JON**

I am so—our last call. I’m…

**MARTIN**

It’s fine.

**JON**

No, it’s not. I, hold on. (NOTE CRINKLES) I shouldn’t have—

**MARTIN**

We don’t have time for this, Jon.

**JON**

I—Alright.

**MARTIN**

I need you to promise me if you hear anything… worrying over here… you won’t charge out here and endanger yourself.

It’s…if anything happens, it’s probably going to sound worse than it actually is. So… promise? Because if I think you will, then I can’t… I won’t continue this.

**JON**

Okay. I—okay. (SCRIBBLES A NOTE) There I added that to my _many_ reminders not to go out without a plan.

...are you alright? Has Jonah…?

**MARTIN**

Please. Don’t.

Why haven’t you left, yet?

**JON**

You’re serious? Because I’m not leaving until I get you out of there!

**MARTIN**

Right. So do you have an actual plan regarding that, or…?

**JON**

N—well...

If Melanie and Georgie show up, I can… maybe. Or-or! (SCRIBBLES) Melanie can move through the apocalypse unseen.

**MARTIN**

You just said she’s not— (REALIZING) No.

**JON**

There are several different objects I could use to uh, quit. Here.

**MARTIN**

No, no, no, no—don’t you dare. That’s not—Jon, how would you even find the tower?

**JON**

Melanie gets around fine.

**MARTIN**

(SHRIEKING) Melanie had to be hospitalized! For weeks! She would have died of blood loss otherwise. She had time to recover. She had-had support, people around her to help her.

She was not waging war on an all-powerful terror entity right after she blinded herself!

**JON**

...Could I—could Melanie die of blood loss now, though? In this world? Everyone is kept alive regardless of their physical state.

**MARTIN**

Yes! Yes she could, Jon. She almost _did_ when some rubble fell on her! She and Georgie mentioned it the first ten minutes after we…

Right. You can’t remember.

**JON**

I didn’t get it on tape, so…

**MARTIN**

You didn’t get it on—

Why aren’t you just..? Why can’t you just leave?

**JON**

Why—sorry? (PACING) Everything that happened to you is because of me!

**MARTIN**

Is that all? That’s not remotely tr—

**JON**

Yes it is, Martin! I… I was… I did all those things.

**MARTIN**

That wasn’t you! 

**JON**

(MISERABLY) It w—It’s... I should have… if I had resisted more, earlier, if I hadn’t given so much of myself over to it early on, if I had told you my suspicions… I... 

**[MARTIN AUDIBLY STARTLES ON THE OTHER END.]**

Martin?

**MARTIN**

...Sorry. Sorry, I-I-I’m still here.

**JON**

Martin, are you…?

Is Jonah listening?

**MARTIN**

...I told you, this is happening with his… permission. So, yes.

**JON**

How, how near is…?

**MARTIN**

(QUICKLY, LOUDLY) Look, Jon. We’re dealing with a being that can snap its metaphorical fingers and rewrite people’s brains. It’s—I don’t think any human choices can really stand against that.

I _need_ you to understand that the things that… happened to me aren’t your fault. (SHAKY) Okay? Please?

**JON**

But I—

**[FABRIC RUSTLES ON MARTIN’S END. MARTIN EXHALES PAINFULLY.]**

**MARTIN**

(TEETH GRITTING) I don’t have time to argue the point. I wish I did. I wish I could sit there with you and tell you again and again that it isn’t your fault, but I-I-I—can’t? So I have to ask you to believe me the first time.

it’s not your responsibility to endanger yourself to atone for something you didn’t do. Just. Go through the door. Promise me you aren’t going to gouge your eyes and die of blood loss.

**JON**

You can’t expect me to promise that.

**MARTIN**

No. No, no. You wouldn—

(VOICE BREAKING) Don’t do this? Please. _Please._

**JON**

If there’s no other way, then…

**MARTIN**

Jon! Making sacrifices that can’t accomplish anything isn’t heroic, it’s just—

**JON**

(SNARL) Like you’re one to talk. As though I ever asked you to do this to yourself! As though I wanted you to shuffle me off to die somewhere you wouldn’t have to look at me!

**[QUIET. THEN, A MUFFLED HICCUPING NOISE ON MARTIN’S END.]**

**JON**

Wait. No. Martin, I’m—

**[DIAL TONE.]**

**[JON SLAMS A FIST ON THE DESK.]**

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**JON**

I can remember how Martin visualized the situation, out there. The “real me” sitting in a dark room, pounding at the wall and screaming while watching what my body did through a keyhole.

That’s not how it felt, usually. It felt… most of the time, it felt like it was me.

(HIGH-PITCHED) I wish Daisy were here? She understood this. Even though she had been… no, _because_ she had been so horrible, she would listen and I wouldn’t be afraid that she would...

(PAUSE)

Would Martin hate me, if I told him? If I could really explain? Even if it—rewrote me—so that I did, I still felt… I still enjoyed his pain, sometimes.

But then other times, it was like I was on the verge of waking up from something, and couldn’t stop and I-I-I-

I can’t do this.

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[PHONE RINGING]**

**[HURRIED** **_BEEP_ ** **AS JON PICKS UP.]**

**JON**

Martin?

**JONAH**

You can still come back, Jon.

**[JON HISSES, STANDING UP. ON JONAH’S END, THERE IS IRREGULAR THUMPING IN THE BACKGROUND]**

**JONAH**

It was important to honor dear, sweet Martin’s wish, of course. But his wishes need not override your own. If you choose to come back, then even Martin would have to agree your own choices take precedence.

Isn’t that right, dear?

**[THRASHING]**

**JON**

What have you _done_ to him?

**JONAH**

(GLEEFUL) Wouldn’t you like to know?

You would like to see every detail, I’m sure. I know you must feel terribly bereft, left behind and unable to see the grand show over here.

And poor little Martin imagined you were suffering in our world.

Would you like me to send you pictures, perhaps? Our master can record everything in perfect detail, so if you liked I could give you a memento. No, what am I thinking. Of course you’d prefer a tape! Then you can hear all the darling noises he makes when I’m inclined to let him.

**[FRANTIC THUMPING]**

Ah, _that_ terrifies him. The threat of someone watching you is always so much sharper when the audience is someone you know, isn’t it? Shh, don’t worry. Jon won’t think less of you for all of the begging.

**JON**

(PACING)...Just stop this. Don’t hurt him.

**JONAH**

Mm. No, I think I will keep hurting him all I like.

**JON**

(FURY) This isn’t… this isn’t what we—(WINCE) what it wanted.

**JONAH**

Then come back. Take over the care and keeping of our dear Martin yourself. Go as easy on him as you want to. Or you can leave, and die alone in a world you don’t recognize.

(ODDLY SOFT) It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Archivist. To prefer life to death. Or power to powerlessness.

**JON**

I—

**JONAH (?)**

It felt better, with you. Being you. Loving him through you.

Think about it.

**[DIAL TONE]**

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**JON**

Maybe I should consider it. No, I-I already am considering it.

It wouldn’t be a happy ending. But maybe it would be better? Better for Martin, at least? It’s not what he wanted, but... I-I don’t know.

(PAUSE)

At least I wouldn’t be alone.

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**JON**

I-it’s been…it’s been several...

He hasn’t called.

**[SILENCE]**

He still hasn’t…

**[SILENCE AGAIN.]**

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[PHONE RINGING]**

**[BEEP]**

**JON**

Martin...?

**MARTIN**

(RAGGED) Jon.

**JON**

Are you alright? Sorry, no—terrible question. (SCRIBBLES) I actually wrote “Don't ask Martin if he's okay” on the wall, to remind me, and yet!

**MARTIN**

(SADLY FOND) Of course you did. (THEN, FLATLY) This...this is the last time I’m going to get to call.

**JON**

What? No, no—that’s… that can’t be… why?

**MARTIN**

Because it’s not—never mind. Let’s just—let’s just focus on the important things. I want to be able to, before I go…

There are—there are other things I want to say. (SHAKY) Jon. If... if you come back, because you don't want to—don't want to die...

**JON**

That’s not why—

**MARTIN**

It's okay to not want to die. (LAUGHS) Jonah got that one right. It won't be—I won't judge you for valuing your own life.

I mean. I think it would be a bad decision. I think you'd end up regretting it, because they—the Entities always take more than you think you’re agreeing to. I, I’d be worried about you.

But I don't think it would make you—weak? If you took that deal, instead of dying. Especially since you leaving isn’t going to save the world or anything.

Just, don't say it's for me.

**JON**

Okay.

**MARTIN**

If you... (PAINED) Do you want to come back here and... be the Archivist, again?

**JON**

I...

I don't. Maybe it would be a different story if it was just the power, and none of the... (STRANGLED) none of what I did to you.

**MARTIN**

Jon, it wasn't—

**JON**

Let me finish. Please.

I don't want to rejoin the Eye. But I don't feel like I can just leave, either. Tim, Sasha, and Daisy died. I've made so many mistakes, but I'm the one who got to survive. I'm the one who got a second chance. Who got power.

I have to do _something._

I have to help. I have to make it worth it. (FRUSTRATED)I have to save someone! Anyone! Otherwise, it's all been for nothing.

**MARTIN**

(SADLY) Oh, Jon.

Okay. Just. Let's talk it through. Each option. What are the... the consequences?

**JON**

Rejoining the Eye would... most likely completely eradicate my agency.

Blinding myself and going back out... Significant mortality risk.

**MARTIN**

And... Melanie and Georgie?

You don't have to say, if you think it will compromise...

**JON**

No. It's fine. It's...

They aren't here. I don't think they were headed this direction. I might be waiting a long time. During which time I will... continue to suffer progressive memory loss. A-and I am not sure if, if when they arrived I'd even be of any use, or just another burden in my current state.

[PAINED SILENCE.]

And then, there's the door.

**MARTIN**

Yes.

**JON**

Best case scenario, I will die after three years of memory loss. I eventually won't remember Georgie, Melanie, or Basira, if any of them even survive.

(STRAINED) I won't remember you.

**[SILENCE]**

**JON**

Martin. I... I'm scared.

**MARTIN**

It's okay.

**JON**

I don't want to die like that.

I don't want to get weak and helpless. I don't want to waste away in bed knowing I can't do anything. Knowing that it was all pointless in the end, right up until I forget everything that ever mattered to me.

I don't want to die unknown, in a strange world. (TEARS) I don't want to die alone! I don’t want to die alone.

I wish you were here.

**MARTIN**

I wish I was too.

I'm sorry. I wish I could buy you better choices.

And I'm so sorry I acted like I could make this choice for you. Now I just—I want you to know. Whatever choice you make I—I'll understand.

But if you rejoin the Eye, I won't see you again.

**JON**

Wh-what?

**MARTIN**

F-for my own...

I can't, Jon. Even if Jonah is—worse. Wh-when you’re there, it’s just… (LAUGH IT OFF) It's just easier when I can straight up hate the face that's doing this to me, you know?

I talked to them. Jonah and... you know. They... they do want you back. But they'll respect my request to not have you be the one... doing. All that.

**JON**

Oh.

**MARTIN**

I'm...

(EXHALE) I’m running out of time.

**JON**

No, that's not—can't we have—?

**MARTIN**

Can you—can you do one thing for me before I go?

**JON**

(ANYTHING) What?

**MARTIN**

Can you write "Martin says it's not my fault" on one of your reminder notes? Since I won't be there to tell you every time you go on about it, again?

I just. If you forget things, I don’t want you to forget that I didn’t blame you. I don’t want you to wonder about that.

**JON**

...Fine.

**MARTIN**

And Jon. Again. Any choice. Any choice is—understandable. But, um, also.

You don't have to be a superhero to justify your existence? It's okay if the life you save is your own.

I—

**[DIAL TONE]**

**[DIAL TONE CONTINUES]**

**JON**

Dammit. There was more... there was...

What was I going to—? oh, that's right. I made notes! To remind myself, to— (PAPER CRINKLES)

"Tell Martin--"

**[BREATH HITCHES. JON COLLAPSES ON A TABLE, A SOB EMERGES, MUFFLED AS THOUGH HE'S STUFFED HIS FIST INTO HIS MOUTH.]**

I didn't. I didn't tell him.

**[CLICK]**

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**JON**

Still no Georgie or Melanie. I’ve...I’ve made my choice, then.

I can't do anything here. Not as a part of the Eye. Not blinded. Not when I can barely remember… I can barely think. Staying here, or going out… it won’t save anyone, much as I...much as I want to.

But, if I... if I survive long enough, I think they can pull through and find me. Even if I’m not. In the greatest shape.

I suppose it is the fate of all human life to deteriorate, isn't it? To grow infirm, and weak. To forget, and be forgotten. (ROUGHLY) I still don't want to go. Not alone. But I-I-I...

I'm going to. Just for that hope we can meet again, as myself. Until then, I guess this tape will just be my message in a bottle.

(TAPS THE RECORDER, GENTLY)

Martin. This door was supposed to be for you. I handed you the map with the feverish hope that you'd find your way here, even if you had to on your own. Even if you had to leave me behind.

Funny how that worked out.

...Remember the map. Remember the signposts. Find me, in the next world. Okay?

**[HE STEPS FORWARD, AND KNOCKS.]**

**[THE INNER DOOR OF HILLTOP ROAD OPENS WITH A SINGING ROAR OF FLAME. JON’S FOOTSTEPS CAN BE HEARD STEPPING THROUGH, AND THEN IT DIES DOWN.]**

**[THE DOOR CLOSES.]**

**[CLICK]**

* * *

And when the Archivist leaves this world, you feel it.

Magnus feels it through you, as you. He hums, disappointed, yet he makes no move to tell Martin. Not until you slowly open his mouth.

“The Archivist is gone.”

Martin stirs, where he lay limp and unresistant against Magnus’s body on the loveseat you have pulled out for them. “D-dead?”

“Through the red door.”

Grief settles gently over Martin, welling up in the deepest, most vulnerable parts of his mind. 

_He’s gone. It’s just me, then._

The pain does not surprise you. The Archivist has always had a unique way of making Martin hurt in the places where even Magnus could not reach. Martin loved him, and now he is gone. It hurts Martin, even if it’s what he chose himself.

Martin starts to weep silently—and he smiles. His face crumples into a picture of pitiful grief, and he smiles. 

You watch him, not through Magnus’s eyes but through a pair on the wall. Martin meets your gaze there without flinching, without turning away or attempting to hide any of the conflicting feelings bleeding out of him.

Magnus strokes his hair again.

“Hope the seizures don’t set in too quickly, out there,” Magnus says blithely. “Hope he doesn’t—’’

And then, Magnus cannot open his mouth. You grind his teeth together, shutting it as solidly as possible.

Martin notes something is different, something is wrong. But he is too wrung out to even stiffen, and too fearful to question it.

“N—” Magnus hisses, then snarls. “What is this?”

It only makes him grip Martin tighter, drawing another whimper from Martin’s tired throat. Magnus convulses painfully, but again does not even consider letting Martin go. Not when Martin’s misery bleeds so deliciously through his touch.

(You want him to hold Martin, because Magnus wants to, because you want him to, because Magnus—)

(But Martin smiled, and you want to preserve that smile. All of the hunger for misery is dwarfed by that single thought.)

So, you remove Magnus. Slowly, uncertainly, like you are waking up an atrophied muscle, you pry off his hands and sit him up. 

Martin stares up at Magnus, wide-eyed. He notes how jerky Magnus’s movements are, compares it to the Archivist’s after that first kiss that worried Martin so. Magnus, for his part, looks just as shocked at himself. 

Then, Martin looks down and pulls his knees up to his chest. _I’m alone. It’s for the best. I’m alone._

You look at Martin through Magnus’s eyes. “You aren’t alone.” 

Your words, so much so that Magnus notices and marvels curiously at how his mouth moves without his will behind it. 

“We won’t ever let you be alone again."

Martin squeezes his eyes shut, and shivers from the loss of heat. You hurry Magnus to a cupboard, pulling out a blanket to drape over him. He looks up, wide-eyed again, and huddles into it.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

The tower cracks at this, and starts to shake. Martin starts, finally allowing himself to ask a question.

“What’s going on?”

Before you can open Magnus’s mouth to answer, you feel something take advantage of your splintering. Something outside strikes at the newly formed cracks.

And through those cracks wafts the smell of death.

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[WIND WHIPPING, AND WHAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE HACKING AT GLASS.]**

**[MUFFLED VOICES, AND THEN IT COMES INTO FOCUS.]**

**GEORGIE**

Do you promise, then?

**MELANIE**

God fucking—

Okay. (ROUGHLY) Okay. I promise.

**GEORGIE**

Alright. (WEARY ATTEMPT AT BRIGHTNESS) Alright! So, since this might be our last run, let’s make it a good one.

Let’s bring this down.

**[MORE HACKING. THEN, THE TOWER CRACKS.]**

**[CLICK]**


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Hey so I made a mistake when I posted earlier! I accidentally cut out an entire section and repeated another one. It is now fixed. If you noticed a repeated scene before, or if you notice that's gone and there's a new scene now... that's why. Anyway,
> 
> Warnings: canon-typical descriptions of apocalyptic domains, physical violence + fighting, non-consensual touching (but less than previous chapters), implications of Melanie being ripped, implications of Melanie having a six-pack, and character death. :)
> 
> This chapter is baaasically the conclusion. The next one will be an epilogue. Thank you everyone who has followed this far, even with the delays. I hope that this satisfies.
> 
> I'm thinking of doing a fic of like... discarded ideas, side-stories, missing scenes and such. But idk if anyone would be all that into it, or if I'd have the energy. Still... we shall see.

Death crawls in through the cracks, and you cannot see it.

You can see its edges. You can hear the droning of its awful promise. You can feel its pull like gravity, warping the tower so that the walls and the ceiling bend towards it.

But you cannot see it. Once it enters the first floor, that floor is no longer yours.

Above, the tower sways so that Martin nearly falls out of his chair. You reach for him with everything in the room, but Magnus is quickest. He grabs Martin by his upper arm and steadies him.

“There, now.” Magnus again, and he marvels at how pleasantly involuntary the words feel. He doesn’t have much more time to wonder at the experience, though, because the tower rumbles and tilts again. “Let’s not fall on our face.”

“You’re—You’re being attacked,” Martin says. “Something’s—”

On the very first floor of the tower, where Martin cannot hear and you cannot see, a familiar voice crackles through the air.

“Elias!” It’s the shadow, the one who left you. “It’s your fucking turn!”

Magnus swallows. Hastily, you collapse every set of stairs in the tower. Martin watches Magnus’s reaction carefully, and thinks. His mind races for a moment, and the first guess he lands on is unfortunately accurate.

“Melanie.” Martin's voice wobbles. “Georgie.”

He breaks for the door. Magnus gently allows it, knowing how futile the action is. You watch as Martin reaches them, and is reduced to pounding and kicking as they disappear into the wall.

“None of that.” Magnus clicks his tongue. “You wouldn’t want to see your friends’ demise, after all.”

Magnus is not as certain as he sounds, but he was always excellent at projecting confidence regardless. At the very least, the way Martin turns ashen at that is worth the bluster.

With Magnus’s thought, you rain shards of glass like hail down on the interlopers.

* * *

You cannot see. This is the problem.

You get glimpses of indistinct forms and hear fragments of shouted plans. It is not enough. You cannot see where to attack, or hear what they will do next. The most you get is that infuriating shadow running ahead of the void, blinking out and appearing in your sights only to reveal that your latest projectile missed.

“Not even close!” You can hear a grin in her voice. “What, having a little trouble now that you can’t see? Imagine that.”

You seethe and fling a chair down. All you get in return is laughter.

They take the next floor. You see a flash of tools and rope, and hear the cracking of glass. Then, the second floor becomes as unknowable to you as the first one, and you feel shudders run through the tower as death steps closer to where Magnus acts as your focus.

Upstairs, Martin steps back from the wall, despair hollowing him out.

“Can I get you to,” — _begging helped Jon, at least—_ “I don’t want them to die. Please…”

But then the begging dies on his lips. Instead, he notices a crack running up the one sided glass that makes up the tower. He takes one look at Magnus, considers the distance between the two of them, and then throws himself at the wall.

* * *

You cannot see them. You cannot see them.

You continue to rain broken glass and knife-like obsidian down upon them. Then, impatient, you bring an entire floor upon their heads. But instead of flattening them, it crackles against the force of the Eldest, and glances off like cardboard.

“Shit,” the shadow breathes. “You’re—It’s not nearly as strong against you as we thought it...”

You recoil, and extend the tower by a hundred stories. You close every avenue there is, every way up. You continue to rain projectiles, hoping at least to take out the more vulnerable ex-assistant when she strays, if you cannot touch the Eldest’s creature.

And yet, they break though and _it_ proceeds.

If you could see them, if you could look into the void—

“Georgie!” calls the shadow, glinting at the edge of your vision, huffing. “I had an idea. Maybe we don’t—he’s always listening, always watching. So maybe—”

The sound cuts out, and you hear no more.

Upstairs, you lurch everything you have at Martin to stop him. Magnus gets there first, seconds before you wrap the tower itself around Martin’s ankle. Martin cries out in frustration, but his eyes glint with powerful hope.

_It’s a real threat. That’s why he, you won’t let—if I can just reach it—_

Martin struggles as though it’s the beginning, again. He thrashes and beats his elbows against Magnus with new furious strength. Magnus smiles, unaffected except for how charming he finds the expression of wild, desperate hope.

“None of that,” he says. “The most you could do is hurt yourself. Now—”

As he talks, another floor disappears to you. This time you didn’t even see a hint of how they accomplished it. You expand the tower again by dozens of stories to make up for the lost one, fortifying each new one with fire and spikes and anything that might stop them.

But if you could see—if you could look into the void—

You search, and search, and finally you find something: a single slot in one the floor most recently taken by the Eldest’s abomination. You squeeze in an eye, stinging as you peer into the hazy view it gives you.

A shadow flits by.

“Georgie! Found one!”

Before you know what is happening—you see. You see into the thing at the center of the void: a bright silhouette against the nothingness, a shape of something that once was a human.

It looks back at you, and locks on your existence.

“You,” it says. “Jonah Magnus.”

Right before it says the words, you realize you have made a mistake.

Magnus stops mid sentence, seeing what you see, hearing what you hear—the both of you completely unable to stop it.

* * *

You know the words, have known what they meant even before they had been translated into human speech. The first terrible knowledge ever held by sentient life, the first knowledge you ever recoiled from. The promise of the Eldest, who was there before you and will be there at your end, for all your attempts to deny it.

You knew the words. But you did not know, until now, how Magnus would hear them.

_(THE MOMENT YOU DIE IS THE REST OF YOUR LIFE)_

And Magnus hears: you never escaped.

And Magnus hears: all you have done is for nothing.

Through him, you feel death. You feel it as you have never felt it before. It wrings through him into the core of your being: the despair of an inevitable end, the futility of all action, the smallness of any will against the immensity of nothing that comes before and after it.

You blank out for a moment. When you return, you cannot feel Magnus, or see through him. Cut off from your gaze, he collapses like a puppet at Martin’s feet, and starts to crumble.

Your vision splits into a billion pieces.

* * *

At the bottom of the ocean, a man dies. His rib cage is crushed again under the leagues and leagues of water, but this time you cannot knit it back together and keep the cycle going.

You watch.

In an apartment in London, a woman burns to death. As she melts for the last time, her pain ceases to be comprehensible to her. Her vision blacks out so she cannot be horrified by the sight of her flesh melted and consumed.

You watch.

What you can still see of your tower sways and crumbles. At the edge of your perception, you hear that harsh voice calling out.

“Come on, Georgie!”

“...can’t…”

“You can survive this! One step at a time, okay?”

Slowly, as though every inch is pained, the void withdraws from your tower.

You watch.

At the very top of your tower, your restraints have slackened away from Martin. He has made it to that looming crack in the glass. He bashes it with his fists and elbow until he bleeds.

"Come on!" he screams. "Come on, come on, come on!"'

_Three years three years three years three—_

He shatters it, and falls through. You watch.

Miles away atop the grand canyon, a woman who has been falling since your world began now finally hits the ground. Her bones shatter and her organs explode. She is reduced to a splatter on the ground, a mockery of the form of a human being..

You turn achingly back to Martin. You cannot just watch.

You throw every bit of will you have left at him. Wind resistance, cutting down the length he has to fall, generating every soft thing you can manage towards where he lands.

You cannot bear Martin dying. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot.

Martin blinks at how he lands, cushioned painlessly on impossibly soft grass and flowers. There has been so much pain, recently. He expected to feel his bones break as a punishment, to have to crawl through his own blood and pulp away from the foot of the tower.

Before he can reflect on why, his mind turns sharply in another direction.

_Three years three years three years three—_

He jumps up, calling.

“Melanie?! Melanie!”

_Signposts, the path, the picture, Jon, where—_

He runs. But before you see where he goes, your vision fractures again.

* * *

Everything spins, incoherent.

In a theater, a puppet tears out their hooks and limps away—bleeding out but determined, jaw set as they stumble forward. 

You watch.

Deep below the ground, a worm finally makes it to the surface of his tomb, limbs rearranging into a human form as he weeps in relief, finally able to see the sky.

You watch. 

Animals burst out of a factory, running off the conveyor belts as though they have just woken up from a trance.

You watch.

You cannot control the perspectives you seek as you have before. Nor can you view them all at once. Instead you cycle helplessly from one sight to another, scarcely able to direct your own gaze.

You are wounded. You are weak. You are out of control. You are dying. 

You have always been dying, you realize miserably. But you are not dead. Not yet.

You break the earth, and steam hisses out of the cracks at your frustration. The sky burns, the sea boils, the wind bites as you whirl around it, attempting to regain yourself.

Even cut down like this, your lifespan ranges hundreds of thousands of years. Even gutted you have power. Even struck by the Eldest, you have purpose and desire to anchor you.

You look for Martin. 

Slowly, painfully, you regain control of your gaze. You search, and search—and then you realize that ultimately there is only one place he could go, only one place where he could escape.

You find Hill Top Road. 

The End’s creature and its shadowy attendant already loom near it. They have traveled far during your recovery. You seethe at their presence, the wind hissing about the house with your displeasure. If only you could shut them away, them and the wretched gate to another world. 

You can’t quite manage that. You are too wounded. But you are not powerless, even now, so you open weak eyes around Hill Top Road and slowly arrange the landscape. 

You wait. 

* * *

Martin emerging into your sight fills you with something akin to what ancient humans once felt seeing the sun emerge from an eclipse. Relief, joy, hope, wonder—feelings so soft they sting like salt on the fresh wounds the Eldest has inflicted upon you.

“I see you!”

Martin jumps.

"I see you! I see you!”

He whirls, trying to see where he hears the muffled voice coming from. He hears the skittering of thousands of insects instead, and the ground shifting below him. Then, from that shifting earth, he feels a hand on his ankle.

“Martin! Martin!” Not one human voice, but many—and each voice infected with swarms of insects. “Martin, come back!”

A scream catches in Martin’s throat.

You needed a voice. You looked for the other assistant, the sensible one from the police. But she has blinked out of your vision as well, taken—by _it_ you infer, hissing—when you were distracted. You reached for employees of other branches of your temple, but they were on other continents, and you no longer have the power to transport them so far.

So you turned to the closest domain near Hill Top Road. There were men and women already infected by your rotting, swarming sibling there. They are not suited for you, not as the Archivist and Jonah were. But this world is still mostly yours, and so you take them.

“Martin.” Your pleas rise through the swarm. “Stay.”

Martin is reminded of Jane Prentiss’s horrific love, and his fear spikes anew. He looks at all the faces rising from the ground. They twist into awe, reaching out to him with the most pitiful expression of love Martin has ever seen. Finally, he understands what you said before: that you are _many,_ that you exist within nearly all living things.

“N-n,” Martin manages. “You…”

_Three years._

The thought unfreezes him. He runs.

He runs. He is so, so close to Hill Top Road. You can see it in him, the frantic hope and its fearful refrain whipping him into a frenzy.

_No no no those people I’m sorry I’m so sorry three years three years—_

The humans from the corrupted ground are unsuited to your will. They seize up and convulse as you move them, some of them falling completely still. It doesn’t stop you. There are many of them, and once one seizes up you can simply take others closer to Martin.

You have them rise, and grab him. One trips him, reaching up from the ground. He tries to get up, but others have risen and restrain him from the side.

"No!" His voice echoes, all rage and despair. "No, NO!"

He throws himself forward. Punches, kicks, struggles. But even weakened as you are, even with these imperfect vessels, he is pulled inexorably back.

"Please, please, please," he cries. "I came so far. I—"

And then, like a cold chill, you feel the Eldest’s creature draw near. Near enough that Martin’s eyes widen, catching a glimpse far off on the horizon.

No. You will not allow it.

The crowd wrestles him back. You try to have one cover his mouth, but its hand is too clumsy in your grip. Martin struggles just free enough of it to cry out.

"Help me!" he calls. "Georgie, Melanie—!"

It takes some time, enough that for a moment you can hope they didn’t hear. But then, the shadow appears as though out of thin air. She beats at the hoard with her cane—one careless strike hitting Martin, and drawing a loud yelp from him.

Your snarl runs through the crowd.

“Shit,” she says. “Shit, shit, shit.”

You direct them to attack her. It is difficult, when you can’t see when or where she dodges. At first all you accomplish are a few superficial blows—and reducing the number of hands holding Martin back. He fights all the harder for it.

But as close as she is, and as far away from the void, she cannot escape forever. One of your hastily acquired vessels strikes, and you hear a meaty thud where a fist connects against the shadow. She gasps, and you hear pain in it.

From a distance, the blinding void stirs as though awakened by the sound. It takes a step forward.

You blow the wind harshly, as though it could push it away with this gust.

“Oh fuck off,” the shadow snaps. Then, undeterred from the blow, she grabs Martin with one hand. “You aren’t getting him.”

How can she—no, how _dare_ she?

She does not love Martin. Never did, never would. Not as a partner, and not even as a friend. She had little but rude things to say about him, little but cruelty and contempt to offer him.

So how can she pull back so hard? How could she try so hard to steal from you what you love, when she holds no love for him herself?

"M-melanie," Martin whimpers, reaching for her. "Melanie, I’m sor—"

“Ugh, shut up with that,” she growls. “Fight!”

He does. And for a moment, the two of them almost free him. But just as it is easier for her to kick at your vessels now that they are so close, so is it easier for you to find her when you know she is holding onto Martin from the front. And so you have the vessels strike, and strike again until she falls back.

You see a trace amount of blood on the ground. For a moment you worry for Martin—and then you realize it is hers.

"Fuck," the shadow cries out, flailing uncertainly. "Goddamn, motherfucking—agh!"

The void moves with purpose now, the End’s creature stirring almost frantically—how? How could a thing of the End move with desperation, when it wants nothing and fears nothing?

You cannot allow it near Martin. Fearfully, roughly, your crowd hauls him away. He screams.

You see her grope around the air to try and find where she had held on before. She can’t; you have already jerked Martin too far back. Martin kicks and screams, and then he looks back to where he is being taken.

You open a cave for him in the ground, a place where you can keep him safely away from these troublemakers. He sees it, and goes ashen.

"Georgie!" he screams, voice quaking. "Georgie, do it!"

The shadow stiffens. "Wait—"

"Please, please, please," Martin prays, rasping. "Georgie, please. Georgie."

Martin’s pitiful cries have stirred something in the incomprehensible creature. It moves, the scenery around going black and incomprehensible around it, swallowing up where the shadow sits.

You try to cover Martin’s ears. It does not block out the words.

"It doesn't matter if you are loved," it begins.

Martin's eyes go wide, and for a split second he regrets what he has invoked.

* * *

You are in his mind, as it happens.

Everything rises, the burden of fear Martin has born day after day, the looming dread that has always eaten away at him. You see Martin revolt. You see everything in him recoil, and reject this—but the End is stronger than anything Martin is or was, stronger than anything anyone could be.

“—love was never going to save you.”

Its voice cuts through all Martin’s barriers. All of the kindness and comfort and doting and hope. All of the feeble attempts to make himself lovable, to win affection. Everything he'd put between _it_ and himself is ripped away.

Everything that Martin was, everything he could have been goes flat.

You watch.

You feel it. Even with Magnus’s destruction, death has never hit you so hard.

Every limb you controlled falls, struck numb by the immensity of this loss. In an instant, every one of the unfortunate vessels you had stolen from your sibling are cut off. You flail, attempting to reach out through them, but they only scream as the immensity of this despair numbs them to your control. They fall, convulsing helplessly for a moment as the aftereffects of your control wash over them.

And then you cannot see. You only hear a warbled echo of the shadow’s voice.

"Georgie," she calls. "Georgie, stand up."

No response that you can discern. And then, the shadow again, farther in the distance and bending away from your perception.

"Not yet, Georgie. Not yet. Come with me."

Whatever words pass between them then, you cannot hear, for you black out entirely.

* * *

You return to yourself. You attempt to move the rotted victims as before, but they are cut off as Magnus was, unresponsive to your will. You try to speak through them, to call Martin’s name, but their voices do not obey. You are left voiceless, unable to speak without humans to do it for you.

You watch.

Martin lays limply on the ground. No sounds, no movement, no thoughts—barely even the rise and fall of his lungs. All of the things you have loved so about him carelessly crushed. The sight fills you with unbearable grief that wells up and makes you wish you could burst from it.

The shadow flickers in your vision. Her cane connects gently with where Martin lays on the ground and she reaches down to grab him.

“Martin? ...right. Sounds like your breathing.”

You want to scream. You cannot.

''Come on, Martin," she says, grunting under his weight as she slowly holds him up. "We're going alone."

The victims are cut off from you, but it is still your world, you tell yourself. You struggle to put your will back into the landscape. You manage to reach for Martin with a single root from the ground, eyes sprouting in it as it weakly wraps around Martin’s leg.

The shadow stamps down on it.

"Stop that," she snarls. "You lost."

You cling. She twists her boot against you, crushing the flesh of your eyes into the soil below.

"It's done," she said. "Everything you wanted from him is gone."

You cling harder.

''You've taken everything else. You're not getting him. Piss off."

Finally, she kicks your root away.

Martin twitches, some part of him trying to grasp onto some familiar motion or thought. So she has to throw him half over her shoulder and drag him up to the house on the hill above.

She does not love him. She was never his friend. So why, why, why…?

Grunting and staggering the whole way, she still makes it up to the house you cannot touch. She pulls him into the house. As her hands are full, she leaves the door open as she enters. It is open enough for you to see a single hazy glimpse of where she puts him down on a chair: so, so close to your world, but out of reach.

You will never see him again, you realize. Martin will be gone from your sight forever, broken and listless right up until he dies.

You cannot—

You cannot bear this.

You cannot bear this. But neither can you stop this.

You catch a glimpse of the red door inside the house opening. You still cannot touch the house, so you miserably curl beneath it, weakly shaking it in desperation.

You want to scream. You have never been able to without a human mind and heart and mouth to do it for you. You have also never wanted to, for so little in the world could terrify you. But you have been changing of late.

And so, you scream.

You scream through the earth and the sky and the mountains and the ocean. You scream through every inch of your world. The sound of it resounds so loudly that every human left in your many domains trembles under the weight of its sorrow.

You reach for that haze in your sight where the one you love has gone.

And then—

* * *

**[CLICK]**

**[THE HOUSE SHAKES WEAKLY.]**

**MELANIE**

(STILL CATCHING HER BREATH) Shit, fucking—give up, already. Prick.

Okay. Now. Martin. You have to—you have to step through yourself. This is, uh. This is the part Georgie and I…

Georgie…

**[THE SHAKING INCREASES.]**

**MELANIE**

Fucking ...really?!

**[SHE GRABS MARTIN AS THE SHAKING GETS MORE VIOLENT, AND THE HOUSE STARTING TO TILT.]**

  
  


**MELANIE**

Don’t. Fall back out. Eyes on the red door, okay? Shit, that thing just doesn’t quit.

Martin. You have to get through the door. _Now._

**[MARTIN GIVES A SHUDDERING BREATH.]**

**MELANIE**

Come on! You have to—it’s so much better on the other side! I would throw you over there myself if I could, but I—it has to be you.

And it! Has to be quick now! Because—

**[THE HOUSE SHAKES, AND GROANS AGAIN AS IT TILTS. MARTIN’S CHAIR CAN BE HEARD SLIDING SUBTLY BACK BEFORE SHE GRABS IT AGAIN.]**

**MELANIE**

Come on. You have to find something. Something inside. Anything you hoped or wanted. Anything you can hold onto. (SAD, WOBBLY LAUGH) Georgie said—Ge-Georgie said, everyone has something without fear.

Argh. Come _on_ Martin! I’m… I’m tired. I can’t—You just need to make one step! One movement to the door. That’s all.

**[NOTHING FROM MARTIN. THE WOOD OF THE HOUSE STARTS TO BEND, AND THE SHAKING GETS EVEN STRONGER.]**

**MELANIE**

Jon’s there! Y-you know? He’s waiting for you! He wants to see you again.

**[MARTIN STIRS, BRIEFLY]**

There was a… a tape?

Come on. You love him. You love him, re- (HUFF) remember? Doesn’t that—isn’t that…? Try to hold onto it. Try. Think—

**[SLIPPING. A CHAIR SCREECHES, AS IT STARTS TO SLIDE BACK TOWARD THE APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPE OUTSIDE.]**

No, no, no. Don’t—Martin, fucking—one movement! One reach, or step, o-or…

You love him. You love him. Come on, doesn’t that count for something? You—

**[A NOISE SPLITS THROUGH THE AIR. LIKE WINDS, OR A THOUSAND METALLIC SCREECHES MELDING INTO ONE. THEN, IT BECOMES JUST HUMAN ENOUGH TO RECOGNIZE AS A SCREAM, WHICH THEN BREAKS INTO SOBBING.]**

**[MARTIN STIRS, TURNING.]**

**MARTIN**

Wh…?

**MELANIE**

Martin, no! Don’t look—

**[SUDDENLY THE HOUSE TILTS COMPLETELY. FURNITURE FLIES, MELANIE SCRAMBLES TO GRAB HOLD OF SOMETHING, AND MARTIN FALLS.]**

No, no, no, Martin! W—

**[CLICK].**

* * *

_What is that? Who could sound so_ —

Martin looks back. He looks back at _you._

You can see, even if only hazily. He hears you, and he turns to look back. Scarcely able to move, but his hand twitching as though to reach toward the sound you make. And as he reaches back to you, you hear his thoughts cut through, out of a blind spot where you should not be able to see or hear any thoughts at all.

Is that love, then?

— _do they need_ — _?_

It reinvigorates you. You attack the house with new strength, upending the ground so it tilts and bends and Martin—

Martin returns to you.

You catch him, and all the screams of your new voice turn into soft sobs. You peer into his mind, and within the crushing static left by the End you find a single strand of clear thought.

 _Someone needs help_ — _? Does_ —?

There is no emotion in it, for you or anyone else. Martin has simply been trained and conditioned to help as long as he can remember. By his mother’s punishing words, every time he failed to do so; by the praise he earned from others with every act of self-abnegation; even by you, you realise, granting him the gift of control only in his efforts to help the Archivist and his other assistant friend. The instinct is so burned in him that he did not need feeling, logic or memory behind it to provoke him to action. All he needed was the sound of another creature crying out in sorrow.

He did not know it was your cry, your scream that called to him. But it is enough.

Martin. Your Martin.

You cradle him with the eye-filled roots. You see his eyes flickering to where a dim outline of the ex-assistant lurches toward him. Then, she blinks entirely out of sight.

Martin shudders. A vague memory of her saying something about love flits through his mind. A final thought cuts through the static.

_Have I ever loved anything, without fear?_

Then all within him goes flat, again. No more thoughts, no more agonal gasps of emotion. You curl up a tendril to his chest, and feel his heart start to slow and his veins slacken. It is as though even the tissues in his body have no more will to continue.

You cannot feel him through the roots as you could through humans hands, but you still gently place them on his face. Nor can you form words without a human brain to make them for you, so you babble soothing nothings to him. Your newfound voice is all sweetness to him, all sorrow.

His eyes are wide and empty. There is no more fear or hope, there. No more of that love in him that you once delighted to behold.

But even so, you love him. You will always love him.

How could you ever have wanted to be cruel to him? How have you wasted so much time with that? How did you ever want anything other than to treat him softly?

But you have millennia left, even as you are dying. So you hold Martin close, and carry him back to the opening you made in the ground. You draw him in there, where no death or shadow-touched thing can take him away again. Then, you burrow into his heart and force it to beat, force his veins to pump blood long after the will to live has fled.

As long as you live, so will Martin. For you will never, ever let him go.


End file.
